Notes expository and critical on certain British theories of morals

NOTES, EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL,

ON

CERTAIN BRITISH THEORIES OF MORALS.

EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE,
FOR

EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS.

LONDON HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO

CAMBRIDGE MACMILLAN AND CO.

DUBLIN M'GLASHAN AND GILL.

GLASGOW . .... JAMES MACLEHOSE.

NOTES

EXPOSITORY AND CRITICAL

ON

CERTAIN BRITISH THEORIES OF MORALS,

BY SIMON S. LAUKIE, A.M.,

AUTHOR OF ' PHILOSOPHY OF ETHICS,' ETC.

EDINBUEGH:
EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS.

1868.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THOMAS HOBBES, 1

LORD SHAFTESBURY, . 7

FRANCIS HUTCHESON, . 25

BISHOP BUTLER, . . 54

TRANSITION.— DAVID HUME, 72

JEREMY BENTHAM, . . 77

JOHN STUART MILL, . . .98

PROFESSOR BAIN, . . .128

PREFACE.

THESE contributions to the history of
ethical speculation in Britain would have
had a place in a treatise on the Philosophy
of Ethics, published by me nearly two years
ago, had I not found that an adequate treat
ment of the various representative writers
on Morals involved too great a departure
from the line of argument within which I
then wished to confine myself}

Ethical language has undergone so much
change from time to time, and has at all
times been so loosely employed, that a con
sistent exposition of the older writers is dif
ficult, and to some extent involves interpre
tation. If the expositions given in this book

1 Sec footnote to page 139 ^/"Philosophy of Ethics.

Vlll PREFACE.

are faithful, and if the language of the past
is brought into harmony with our present
terminology, some service will have been
rendered to the student, even shoiild the
criticisms be found to fall short of the
importance of their several s^lbjects.

S. S. L.

EDINBURGH, 1868.

THOMAS HOBBES.

IT is not my purpose either to expound or criticise
the ethical system of the philosopher of Malmesbury.
The following extracts from his Leviathan and Human
Nature — passages which I had marked in the course
of my reading — are strung together that the student
may have before him some of those moral opinions
and definitions which, by their boldness, their vigour,
and their consistency, startled the ethical conscious
ness of England, and formed the point of departure
of British Moral speculation, A.D. 1645-1650.

' Whatever is the object of any man's appetite or
desire, that is it which he, for his part, calleth good ;
and the object of his hate and aversion, evil ; and of
his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these
words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used
with relation to the person that useth them ; there
being nothing simply and absolutely so, nor any
common rule of good and evil to be taken from the
nature of the objects themselves ; but from the per
son of the man where there is no commonwealth, or
in a commonwealth from the person that represent-
eth it ; or from, an arbitrator or judge whom men

A

2 Thomas Hobbcs.

disagreeing shall by consent set up and make his sen
tence the rule thereof/

' Sudden Glory is the passion which maketh those
grimaces called Laughter; and is caused either by some
sudden act of their own that pleaseth them, or by the
apprehension of some deformed thing in another, by
comparison whereof they suddenly applaud them
selves/

' Grief for the calamity of another is Pity ; and
riseth from the imagination that a like calamity may
befal himself ; and therefore is called also Compassion,
and, in the phrase of this present time, a fellow-feel
ing ; and, therefore, for calamity arising from great
wickedness the best men have the least pity ; and for
the same calamity those hate pity that think them
selves least obnoxious to the same/

' The acknowledgment of power is called Honour/

' Reverence is the conception we have concerning
another, that he hath the power to do unto us both
good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt!

' Repentance is the passion which proceedeth from
opinion or knowledge that the action they have done
is out of the way to the end they would attain : the
effect whereof is. to pursue that way no longer, but,
by the consideration of the end, to direct themselves
into a better/

' There is yet another passion, sometimes called Love,
but more properly Good-will or charity. There be no
greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to
find himself able not only to accomplish his own

Thomas Hobbes. 3

desires, but also to assist other men in theirs : and
this is that conception wherein consisteth charity. In
which, first, is contained that natural affection of
parents to their children, which the Greeks call
Zropyri, as also, that affection wherewith men seek to
assist those that adhere unto them. But the affection
wherewith men many times bestow their benefits on
strangers, is not to be called Charity, but either con
tract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship ; or
fear, which maketh them to purchase peace/

The ' alternate succession of appetites, aversions,
hopes, and fears is no less in other living creatures
than in man ; and therefore beasts also deliberate/
... * In deliberation the last appetite or aversion
immediately adhering to the action, or to the omis
sion thereof, is that we call the Will — the act, not the
faculty of willing. And beasts that have deliberation
must necessarily also have will.9 . . . ' Will, there
fore, is the last appetite in deliberating.'

' Nature hath made men so equal in the faculties of
the body and mind, as that though there be found
one man sometimes manifestly stronger in body, or of
quicker mind than another, yet when all is reckoned
together the difference between man and man is not
so considerable as that one man can therefore claim
to himself any benefit to which another may not pre
tend as well as he/

' From this equality of ability ariseth equality of
hope in the attaining of our ends. And, therefore, if
any two men desire the same thing, which neverthe-

4 Thomas Hobbes.

less they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies ;
and in the way to their end, which is principally their
own conservation, and sometimes their delectation
only, endeavour to destroy or subdue one another/

' So that in the nature of man we find three prin
cipal causes of quarrel. First, Competition ; second,
Diffidence ; thirdly, Glory/ . . . ' Hereby it is mani
fest that, during the time men live without a common
power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condi
tion which is called War ; and such a War as is of
every man against every man/

1 The desires and other passions of man are in them
selves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed
from those passions, till they know a Law that forbids
them ; which, till laws be made, they cannot know ;
nor can any law be made till they have agreed upon
the person that shall make it/

' To this war of every man against every man this
also is consequent, that nothing can be unjust. The
notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice,
have there no place. Where there is no common
power there is no Law ; where no Law, no injustice/

Hobbes then deduces nineteen ' Laws of Nature ' — a
Law of Nature being a ' precept or general rule found
out by Reason, by which a man is forbidden to do
that which is destructive of his life, or taketh away
the means of preserving the same, arid to omit that
whereby he thinketh it may be best preserved.
Among these laws are included all the virtues.

'And the science of these laws is the true and

Thomas Hobbes. 5

only Moral Philosophy. For Moral Philosophy is
nothing else but the science of what is good and evil
in the conversation and society of mankind. Good
and Evil are names that signify our appetites and
aversions ; which in different tempers, customs, and
doctrines of men are different ; and divers men differ
not only in their judgment on the senses of what
is pleasant and unpleasant to the taste, smell, hear
ing, touch, and sight, but also of what is unfavour
able or disagreeable to reason in the actions of
common life. Nay, the same man in divers times
differs from himself; and one time praiseth, that
is, calleth Good, what another time he dispraiseth
and calleth Evil ; from whence arise disputes, contro
versies, and at last war. And, therefore, so long as a
man is in the condition of mere nature, which is a
condition of war, private appetite is the measure of
good and evil ; and consequently all men agree on
this, that peace is good, and therefore also the way or
means of peace, which, as I have showed before, are
justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the
rest of the laws of nature are Good, that is to say,
moral virtues ; and their contrary vices Evil. Now the
science of Virtue and Vice is Moral Philosophy, and
therefore the true doctrine of the laws of nature is
the true Moral Philosophy. But the writers of Moral
Philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues
and vices, yet, not seeing wherein consisted their
goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the
means of peaceable, sociable, and comfortable living,

6 Thomas Hobbes.

place them in a mediocrity of passions ; as if not the
cause but the degree of daring made fortitude ; or
not the cause but the quantity of a gift made liber
ality. These dictates of reason men used to call by
the name of laws, but improperly ; for they are but
conclusions or theorems concerning what conduceth
to the conservation and defence of themselves ; whereas
Law properly is the word of him that by right hath
command over others. But yet, if we consider the
same theorems as delivered in the Word of God that
by right commandeth all things, then are they pro
perly called Laws/

Cumberland and Cudworth were the chief oppon
ents of Hobbism. Their speculations, and those of
a few writers of less note, fill up the remainder of
the 17th century. In 1699 appeared Lord Shaftes-
bury's Inquiry concerning Virtue, which forms the
groundwork of all ethical speculations, since that
period, on the intuitional side.

Lord Shaftcsbury.

THE MOKAL THEORY OF LORD
SHAFTESBURY.

The connexion between Virtue and Religion is the
ostensible subject of Lord Shaftesbury's inquiries.
But to show the independence of Virtue on the belief
in a God, and on the other hand the dependence of
the perfection of it on a right conception of the Deity,
was impossible without inquiring what Virtue was in
itself. Thus his treatise became almost purely ethical.
The introductory dissertation on Theism, Atheism,
Polytheism, and Dsemonism concludes thus : — ' Now,
since there are these several opinions concerning a
superior Power; and since there may be found perhaps
some persons who have no formed opinion at all on
this subject, either through scepticism, negligence of
thought or confusion of judgment ; the consideration
is how any of these opinions, or the want of any cer
tain opinion, may possibly consist with virtue and
merit, or be compatible with an honest or moral
character/

In prosecuting this inquiry, Shaftesbury begins by
considering the end of sensible creatures, as that is
revealed by their Constitution or ' Frame/ From this
Constitution it appears that each creature has for itself
a private good and interest, which is a right state of
that creature, and which is forwarded by nature, and
' affectionately sought' by the creature itself. If any
thing in the appetites or passions of the creature do

8 Lord Shaftesbury.

not conduce to this end, this private good, it is
' ill ' to him. Further, if the natural constitution is
such that by being ill to others he is ill to himself,
and by being good to others he is good to himself ;
and if the being good to others is Virtue, then Virtue
and Private Interest agree. That this is the fact will
be proved further on. Meanwhile, the prior question,
' What Goodness or Virtue is?' has to be answered.

If a creature existed such that it was absolutely
complete in itself, and sufficient to itself, and had no
relation to any other creature or system in the uni
verse of things, it might in a certain sense be called
' Good/ But if it had a relation to a system — if there
were something in it which pointed beyond itself,— if
it were in truth only a part of a whole, arid not itself
a whole, and yet had no affection or activity in the
direction of that system or whole, it manifestly could
not be called Good. Nay, if it be merely ' insignificant
and of no use/ it is faulty or imperfect, and conse
quently not good. It is also manifest that if a sensible
creature acts for the benefit of the ' system' to which
he belongs, by force or without ' affection/ he is neither
good nor ill ; these qualities being predicable of him
only when the ' good or ill of the system to which he
has relation is the immediate object of some passion
or affection moving him.' A creature, therefore, is
good or ill only through the affections.

What, then, are the good or natural affections, and
what are the ill or unnatural affections ?

That amount of regard to private interest which is

Lord Shaftesbury. 9

not incompatible with a due regard for the system of
which it forms a part is ' not ill : ' while that regard to
private interest which is essential to the good of the
whole or the system, is necessary to constitute a
creature good. But it is not good, in so far as self-
affection or any secondary consideration, such, for
example, as Fear, is the motive and the end to the
pursuit either of private interest or the good of other
creatures ; but only in so far as the act is prompted by
affection for its kind. Accordingly, 'a good creature
is such a one as by the natural temper or bent of
its affections is carried primarily and immediately,
and not secondarily or accidentally, to Good, and
against 111/ And an ill creature is just the con
trary.

But proceeding from ' what is esteemed mere
Goodness, and lies within the reach and capacity of
all sensible creatures, to that which is called Virtue
or Merit, and is allowed to Man only/ we find that,
in a creature ' capable of forming general notions of
things, not only are the outward beings which offer
themselves to the sense the objects of the affection ;
but that the very actions themselves, and the affec
tions of Pity, Kindness, Gratitude, and their con
traries, being brought into the mind by reflection,
become objects and ends. So that, by the means of this
reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection
directed towards those very affections themselves
which have been already felt, and are now become
the subject of a new liking or dislike/ Thus certain
affections are at once discerned to be good and vir-

io Lord Shaftesbury.

tuous, and certain others bad and vicious, just as the
outward eye discerns beauty and deformity in the
world of sense. These moral distinctions have their
foundation in nature, and the discernment of them is
natural, and 'from nature alone/1 Thus the mind
carries about with it ' characters or pictures of
manners/ and in presence of these the heart or Moral
Sense cannot remain neutral, but constantly takes
part with one ' turn of affection/ and one sentiment
or another, approving the honest and natural, and
disapproving the dishonest and unnatural. The
Heart (Moral Sense), discerning what is good and ill
towards the system to which the individual belongs,
by affecting the just and right, is virtuous, and by
affecting the contrary is the contrary. But it is
the reflex act of affecting the notion or conception
of the good which makes a man virtuous. For if a
creature cannot reflect on what he himself does, or
sees others do, so as to take notice of the honest and
good, and ' make that notice or conception of honesty
and goodness the object of his affection, he has not the
character of being virtuous : for thus, and no other
wise, is he capable of having a sense of Right or
Wrong! Eight and Wrong are not in the act as such,
but in the affection which prompts the act. A mis
take in a matter of fact, for example, being ' no cause
or sign of ill affection, can be no cause of vice. But a
mistake of right' (mistakes which are frequently the
consequence of certain religious superstitions), ' being

1 The Moralists, p. 415.

Lord Shaftcsbury. 11

the cause of unequal [i.e., unjust, bad] affection, must
of necessity be the cause of vicious action in every
intelligent or rational being/ Thus far a knowledge
of Eight and Wrong is essential to Virtue in every
man — that is, such a use of Eeason as ' is sufficient to
secure a right application of the affections.'

Accordingly, with intelligent creatures goodness
[goodnesses], virtues, etc., constitute ' rational objects/
and become ' rational affections ; ' and where these
rational affections triumph over the ' sensible' or non-
rational, a man is rightly called virtuous. Provided
always it be the affection towards Goodness or Virtue
which has led to the triumph, and not some secondary
motive or ulterior self-interested end.

1 The nature of Virtue consisting in a certain just
disposition or proportionable affection of a rational
creature towards the moral objects of Eight and
Wrong, nothing can, in such a creature, exclude a
principle of virtue, or render it ineffectual, except
what either takes away the natural and just sense of
Eight and Wrong ; or creates a wrong sense of it ; or
causes the right sense to be opposed by contrary
affections. And again, nothing can advance virtue in
a man, except what either nourishes and promotes a
sense of Eight and Wrong ; or preserves it genuine
and uncorrupt ; or causes it, when such, to be obeyed,
by subduing and subjecting the other affections to it/
Shaftesbury then proceeds to consider the possible
influence for good or evil in these three directions of
the various opinions regarding the Supreme Being, set

1 2 Lord Shaftesbury.

forth in the beginning of his essay on Virtue. It is
unnecessary to follow him through this part of his
argument; because although full of suggestive thoughts
on a subject of great interest, it has not, in the present
state of ethical inquiry, a direct bearing on the lead
ing problems. Plis concluding words on this topic
will therefore suffice :—

* Hence we may determine justly the relation which
Virtue has to Piety ; the first being not complete but
in the latter ; since where the latter is wanting there
can neither be the same benignity, firmness, nor con
stancy ; the same good composure of the affections or
uniformity of mind. And thus the perfection and
height of Virtue must be owing to the belief of a
God/

In his second book Shaftesbury, having in the pre
vious part of his treatise considered ' What Virtue is/
and to whom the character of 'Virtuous' properly
belongs, enters on the question of the ' Obligation
to Virtue.' In establishing this obligation, he pro
ceeds by first repeating as his starting-point that
' Eectitude, Integrity, or Virtue/ is to have one's affec
tions right and entire, not only in respect of one's self,
but in respect of the Kind or System of which we
form a part. He then combats the opinion that Self-
interest is in opposition to the Public interest or good,
although the respective affections (Selfish and Good)
have objects which seem to imply an inherent anta
gonism. That the fact is quite the reverse, he shows

Lord Shaftesbury. 1 3

by citing, by way of illustration, the misery of the ill-
humoured, rancorous, and perverse man. With refer
ence to such cases, he shows that we are too apt to omit
from our reckoning the balanced constitution of our
nature, and the discord and consequent misery which
ensues on a disturbance of its harmony. We forget
to regard ourselves in the light of the notion of a
Whole made up of parts, and thus fail to understand
how some particular act should result in moral pain.
When a man is thoroughly bad, we all admit that he
is miserable, while sometimes disposed to doubt the
wretchedness which must naturally follow from any
one particular vicious act. If we kept in view this
' fabrick' of the mind, we should see that ' whoever
did ill, or acted in prejudice of his Integrity, Good
nature, or Worth, would of necessity act with greater
cruelty towards himself than he who scrupled not to
swallow what was poisonous, or who, with his own
hands, should voluntarily mangle or wound his out
ward form or constitution, natural limbs or body/

Entering more into detail, Shaftesbury goes on to
show that the Affections or Passions which may in
fluence or govern are ' (1.) The Natural Affections,
which lead to the good of the Public; (2.) The Self-
Affections, which lead only to the good of the Private;
and (3.) Such as are neither of these, nor tending to
any Good of either the Public or Private, but con
trariwise ; and which therefore may justly be styled
unnatural affections/ The last sort is wholly vicious;
the two former may be vicious or virtuous, according

14 Lord Shaftesbury.

to their degree. For, it is not right that the Self-
affections should be too weak, nor, on the other hand,
that the Public affections should be too strong. He
recurs here to the idea of an inward constitution or
economy, and maintains that virtue is not truly
attained where harmony and balance of the passions
and affections are lost. If, for example, Self-affections
are overpowered by the Public, the whole system
suffers, as well as the individual. Strictly speaking,
therefore, to have any ' natural affection too high, or
any self-affection too low, though it be often ap
proved as a Virtue, is a Vice and Imperfection/
Strictly speaking it is so ; but at the same time he
confesses that a man is properly to be considered as
vicious, only when (1.) Either the public affections
are weak and deficient ; (2.) or the private and
self-affections are too strong ; or (3.) (as stated
above) where such affections arise as tend neither
to the support of the public or private system, but
contrariwise. His next task is to consider these three
mental conditions, with a view to show that it is
contrary to man's interest to manifest any of these
affections, and that it is ' his Interest to be luholly
Good and Virtuous!

First, it has to be shown that ' to have the natural
affections (such as are founded in Love, Complacency,
Goodwill, and a sympathy with the Kind or Species) is
to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment ;
and, that to want them is certain misery and ill/ To

Lord Shaftesbury. 1 5

prove this, we must first know what it is which con
stitutes Happiness, which may be summed up as the
Pleasures of the Body and the Mind. The Pleasures
of the Mind are much greater than those of the Body ;
and it consequently follows, that whatever creates in
any intelligent being a constant flowing series of
mental enjoyments, is of more importance to his
happiness than bodily pleasures. As such mental
enjoyments are either the ' natural' [the good, kindly,
virtuous] affections in their immediate operation, or
proceed from them as their effects, the due establish
ment of these in a creature is the only means of
procuring a certain and solid happiness. Shaftesbury
then illustrates this position in detail, by showing the
genuine pleasures which are yielded to a rational
being by the cultivation of the social and friendly,
the Intellectual and the Virtuous (by which he here
means consciously exercised benignant), affections ;
even the very grief of the affections being associated
with a deeper pleasure than the satisfaction of our
common appetites. With reference to the effects of
the activity of these affections, he cites the pleasures
of participating in the joys of others, and the reflected
approbation which comes back to us as the doers of
benignant deeds. He then shows that the partial
exercise of these affections — their grudging exercise —
does not result in pleasure, but in the reverse ; while
the hearty and entire affection (which he identifies
with Integrity of mind) carries along with it a con
sciousness of merited love and approbation from all

1 6 Lord SJiaftesbury.

society, and is truly to ' live according to nature and
the dictates and rules of supreme wisdom, is Morality,
Justice, Piety, and natural Religion/

But further, man, by virtue of his reason, is a
Eeflective Animal, and is capable of self-inspection
and self-approbation. This reflective approval or dis
approval of the just and natural, or unjust and un
natural, act is properly called Conscience — a name not
strictly applicable to the approval or disapproval of
acts merely prejudicial to our own private interests.
This moral conscience precedes and presupposes
religious Conscience. For the fear of the terrors of
the Deity does not imply a Conscience at all, except
where there is also a self-reprobation of the wrong
and ill-deserving act in itself. Conscience is ' a sense
of deformity in what is ill-deserving and unnatural ;'
also ' a consequent shame or regret at incurring what
is odious and moves aversion/ He also defines it ' a
natural sense of the odiousness of crime and injustice/
Now, if the reflex power gives rise in the case of the
Vicious to such feelings, they must be most miserable.
And if it were alleged that there were men without
any such moral sense, it would then also follow that
they could not be capable of natural affection ; and
' if not of that, then neither of any social pleasure or
mental enjoyment,' or of their effects, as these have been
expounded above. As to that other kind of conscience
not strictly so called — the reflection on ' what was at
any time unreasonably and foolishly done in prejudice

Lord Shaftesbury. 17

of one's real interest or happiness' [i,e., private or self-
interest as opposed to the natural and virtuous affec
tions] — Shaftesbury points to the indirect effect on such
private good of a want of those affections, which bring
in their train the approbation and reciprocated kind
ness of our fellow-men, summing up thus :—

' From all this we may easily conclude how much
our happiness depends on natural and good affection.
For if the chief happiness be from the Mental Plea
sures, and the chief Mental Pleasures are such as we
have described, and are founded in natural affection,
it follows that to have the natural affections is to have
the chief means and power of Self-enjoyment, the
highest possession and Happiness of life/

Shaftesbury then endeavours to show that even the
pleasures of Sense are satisfactions only to the extent
to which they imply social and natural affection ; and
passes finally to the consideration of that inner balance
which nature intended as its end, wherever it gave a
Constitution or Economy, and to which reference had
several times been made in the course of his general
exposition. In this inward Constitution we find given
natural and public as well as private affections ; and
that constitution consequently suffers and is impaired
wherever due activity is denied to these affections ;
nay, they will force their prison-house, and create for
themselves ' unusual and unnatural/ and therefore
destructive exercise. ' Whoever is the least versed in
this moral kind of architecture, will find the inward

B

1 8 Lord Shaftesbury.

fabrick so adjusted, and the whole so nicely built, that
the barely extending of a single passion a little too
far, or the continuance of it too long, is able to bring
irrecoverable ruin and misery/

'Thus we have demonstrated that to have the
natural and good affections is to have the chief means
and power of self-enjoyment : So, on the other side, to
want them is certain misery and ill/

Shaftesbury now goes on to prove that, by ' having
the Self-passions too intense or strong, a creature be
comes miserable/ These Self or ' Home ' affections (as
he calls them) are Love of Life ; Eesentment of In
jury ; Pleasure or Appetite towards nourishment and
the means of generation ; Interest, or the desire of
those conveniences by which we are well provided
for and maintained; Emulation or Love of Praise and
Honour ; Indolence, or Love of Ease and Kest. These,
taken together, constitute, according to Shaftesbury,
Interestedness or Self-Love.

That the excess of these self-affections is injurious
to the Public Interest, all admit ; that they are also
injurious to the private interest of the individual who
indulges them, may easily be proved. It is unneces
sary for us here to follow Shaftesbury. If the names
which he gives to the excess of these passions are
accepted, viz., Cowardice, Revengefulness, Luxury,
Avarice, Vanity and Ambition, and Sloth, we may
spare ourselves the trouble of showing that they are
evils to the individual no less than to society — evils in

L ord Shaftesbury. 1 9

themselves, as well as by losing us our natural affec
tions, on which we have shown the happiness of man
mainly to depend.

The next step in the argument is to show that
those passions which contribute to the advancement
neither of the public nor private system, or which
are unnatural, tend to the misery of the individual
agent. To name them is enough : for who can doubt
that Inhumanity, Petulancy (wanton mischievous-
ness), Malignity, Envy, Misanthropy, Superstition,
Lusts, Tyranny, Ingratitude, where they possess the
human soul, cause Misery 'in the highest degree V

From all which argument we are driven to the
conclusion that to be wicked or vicious is to be
miserable and unhappy — is, in other words, to injure
Self. On the other hand, it is equally manifest that
the Happiness and Good of Virtue, and therefore also
its obligation, are beyond question. If further evidence
were needed, it would be found in what we have
stated respecting the Balance and Economy of our
inner nature.

Thus, then, ' the Wisdom of what rules and is First
and Chief in Nature has made it to be according to
the private interest and good of every one to work
towards the general good ; which, if a creature ceases
to promote, he is actually so far wanting to himself,
and ceases to promote his own happiness and welfare.
He is on this account directly his own enemy, nor

2O Lord Shaftesbury.

can he any otherwise be good and useful to himself
than as he continues good to society, and to that
whole of which he is himself a part. So that Virtue,
which of all excellences and beauties is the chief and
most amiable ; that which is the prop and ornament
of human affairs ; which upholds communities, main
tains union, friendship, and correspondence amongst
men ; that by which countries as well as private fami
lies flourish and are happy, and for want of which
everything comely, conspicuous, great, and worthy
must perish and go to ruin ; that single quality, thus
beneficial to all society and to mankind in general, is
found equally a happiness and good to each creature
in particular, and is that by which alone man can be
happy, and without which he must be miserable. And
this Virtue is the Good, and Vice is the 111 of every

one.'1

With Shaftesbury, words which are now distin
guished, and many of which had been distinguished
by Hobbes, are used as synonymous ; sometimes they
are interchanged in senses not strictly equivalent.
Hence it is requisite to seize the main line and final
purpose of his thought, as we have endeavoured to do,
if we would interpret him in the sense which he him
self would have accepted. Looking at his system in

1 It may not be superfluous here to point out that our exposition and
criticism have reference only to the moral theories, not the moral writings,
of Shaftesbury and others. Were it otherwise, it would be impossible to
omit an account of ' The Moralists ' of which Leibnitz wrote with such
generous enthusiasm, recognising in it the substance of his Theodicee.

Lord Shaftesbury. 2 1

this liberal and sympathetic spirit, we are able to dis
cern in it the basis of all the Intuitionalism of the
eighteenth century. Virtue, Merit, Worth, Eight con
sist, according to him, in the exhibition of the natural
affections, by which he means those affections which
have for their object the good of our kind, that is, of
the rational system of which we form a part. This
Virtue is further seen to be the End of man's consti
tution, as soon as we have learned that man is an
1 Economy/ a Whole made up of parts. Self-interest,
meanwhile, under which we may include all those
desires and acts which have for their ultimate end the
satisfaction of the individual, is legitimately the object
of our concern, provided it be subject to the control
ling influence of the natural or public affections-
Where these latter, however, do not directly or in
directly enter, there is no Virtue, no Merit, no W^orth.
The defect of Shaftesbury 's theory is not to be found
in his conception of the end of man, but in the limited
notion which he forms of Virtue, which is the condi
tion of man's attaining his end. Virtue has a much
wider range than he concedes to it : it embraces the
notion of Moral Law, and obedience to it as such ; and
it also embraces those Self-regarding Moral ends which
do not in their intent touch the Public good ; which,
in truth, derive their distinctive moral character from
the fact that they exalt the personality of the agent.
The very word integrity has to him no meaning
except that of entirety of public affection. He also
errs in assuming throughout as a postulate that the

22 L ord Skaftesbury .

aggregate of Happiness is the end of man, failing to
distinguish subjective Happiness as a test of action
from the sum of Happiness — these two things being
in truth most commonly incompatible.

Having determined the end of man, and wherein
consists the Eight or Virtuous in Action, he only
slightly touches on the question of the faculty by
which we discriminate this 'Eight/ and still more
slightly on the authority which belongs to it, and
which constitutes it ' the Eight/ The moment we see
exhibited those affections commonly known as virtu
ous and laudable, we are so constituted, he affirms, that
we instantaneously approve them. We have, then,
thus far a ' Moral Sense/ With regard to subjective
acts, again, such as the preference of mental to bodily
pleasures, he appeals to the universal sense of all who
have experienced both. He does not claim for man
any distinct faculty by means of which right purposes
and acts are each individually pronounced good, but
only a power of reflectively comparing the pleasures,
bodily, mental, and moral, which have been enjoyed,
and, by means of this reflex act, setting one above the
other. This reflex act of approbation is Shaftesbury's
Conscience or Moral Sense — it is the Sense of the
Virtuous, the consciousness of a man with himself
that he is Eight or Wrong. The doctrine is erroneous,
rather by defect than otherwise. Inner authority and
Law — the supreme fact of ethical Consciousness is not
explained. The path of Virtue is so plain and flowery,
that the phenomena of Law, Duty, Struggle, Eemorse

L ord Shaftesbury. 2 3

scarcely enter into the writer's thoughts. They can
have no place where all is so beautiful to the moral
eye, so seductive, so easy and so advantageous.

The Obligation to Virtue, again, is simply the obliga
tion to pursue that which is so conspicuously our only
happiness, both when we look to our lower and to our
higher interests, that not to pursue it is the extremity
of folly. The weakness of this part of his system is
sufficiently revealed in the phrase which he employs
as an equivalent for obligation to Virtue, viz., reason
to embrace it. He never for a moment dreams of any
obligation other than Self-interest. His system might
in many respects be regarded as an extension of the
Hobbistic use of that term.

Such a theory of refined Eudaemonism, while con
taining much well-reasoned truth, has after all proved
only this, that Virtuous affections no less than private
or self-affections are natural to man ; that if we cul
tivate the former, giving free scope to self-interest only
to the extent to which it does not conflict with these,
we shall be happy ; and that thus only can we be
happy. The test, the ultimate criterion, therefore, of
all actions is Happiness — the aggregate Happiness of
the individual agent.

That the theory of Morality should be left at this
point was impossible. There were deeper things in
man's nature than this refined, and cultivated, and
well-balanced mind had been able to see. Rose-colour
is not the prevailing hue of mortal life. There is an
inner discord deep and mysterious ; there is a self-end

24 Lord Skaftesbury.

which yet is not a personal end ; there is a supreme
law which does not lie without ; there is a terrible voice
of authority in the heart, and a terrible possibility of
Eemorse. A stronger hand was needed to take up the
lamp of thought and carry it into these remote re
cesses. That hand was the hand of Bishop Butler.
But before we discuss the merits and defects of his
higher doctrine, we must give a place to another
prophet of intuitional eudaemonism, Francis Hutche-
sou, whose name has been specially identified with
the doctrine of a Moral Sense.

Francis Hutcheson. 25

FRANCIS HUTCHESON (1725).

With full and explicit recognition of his indebted
ness to Shaftesbury, Hutcheson entered upon the same
field in which his predecessor had achieved so much
and so well merited distinction. His original treatise
was specially directed against the reasonings of Man-
deville, — a circumstance which necessarily modified
his course of argument. He differed from his master
also in his point of view, and, consequently, in his
manner of approaching the question. It was not the
existence of the Virtuous affections in man, and the
Happiness of Virtue which mainly interested him and
which gave stimulus to his thought and balance and
closeness to his argument, but the ' Sense' whereby
certain mental states were discerned to be virtuous.
This question, although not ignored by Shaftesbury,
had not been deliberately taken up by him as a cen
tral and vital one.

In the preface to the fourth edition of his Inquiry,1
Hutcheson himself tells us that his principal design
was ' to show that Human Nature was not left quite
indifferent in the affairs of Virtue to form to itself

1 Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue appeared in 1725. In 1728 he published an Essay on the Nature
and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, which contained illustrations
and extensions of his theory, and very subtle controversion of the theories
of Clarke, Woolaston, and others. A fourth edition of his original work
was published, with corrections, in 1738. His Introduction to Moral Phi
losophy, and the Posthumous Lectures, published (in 1735) after his death,
contain also a statement of his theory.

26 Francis Hutcheson.

observations concerning the advantage or disadvantage
of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct/
but that the Almighty had given us strong affections
to be the springs of Virtue, and made Virtue herself
'a lovely form, that we might easily distinguish it
from its contrary/

In conducting the inquiry which is to establish this
opinion, he begins by stating that Moral Goodness is
the Quality in actions which causes us to approve or
love the agent, and by asking whence this approba
tion arises.

Our sensible perceptions yield us pleasure, and those
things which directly yield us the pleasures of sense
are called good, and give origin to the word ; while
those things which mediately lead to these pleasures
are called useful or advantageous. The former are
immediately, the latter mediately, Good. Thus far
we discern the influence of Hobbes.

Hence it is apparent that our sense of Pleasure
precedes our perception of the Advantageous, and is
the foundation of the perception.

When we seek such pleasures or goods, e.g., the
sensuous and the artistic, or what mediately leads to
them, Riches, we seek them from Interest or Self-
Love.

Many hold that those actions and dispositions which
we call Moral are obeyed by us because they are the
Laivs of a Superior Being, and, as Law, carry with
them rewards and punishments of a general kind,
which make it our Self-interest to obey them ; and

Francis Hutcheson. 27

that in so far as we approve them in others, we do so
because we see their bearing on the natural good of
the whole, and therefore to some extent on our own.
The ground of approbation, as well as the motive
of morality, is thus reduced to Self-interest, or regard
to selfish pleasures distinct from the mere moral act as
such. Virtue is thus a mediate, not an immediate,
Good.

Others hold that we are by our nature determined
to a sense or perception of pleasure, or of immediate
good or beauty, in certain acts and dispositions as
such, whether in others or ourselves, apart from any
consequent advantage ; but that our motive in per
forming such actions is merely the realizing in our
selves of that pleasurable sensation just as we seek
after fine landscapes or statues in order to gratify our
sense of beauty : and thus they reduce motives of
action to Self-interest in another form — only sub
stituting, in point of fact, the immediate for the
mediate.

Hutcheson's object is to show —

' I. That some actions have to men an immediate
goodness, or that by a Superior Sense, which he calls
a Moral one, we approve the actions of others, and per
ceive them to be their perfection and dignity, and
are determined to love the agent. A like perception
we have in reflecting on such actions of our own,
without any view of natural advantage from them.

« II. That the Affection, Desire, or Intention which
gains approbation to the actions flowing from it, is

28 Francis Hutcheson.

not an intention to obtain even this sensible pleasure,
much less the future rewards from sanctions of laws
or any other natural good which may be the conse
quence of the virtuous action, but an entirely different
principle of action from Self-Love or Desire of Private
Good/

The course of argument runs thus :—

Had we no Sense or instinctive feeling of Good
distinct from advantage, interest, or 'natural good'
(all which terms are, with Hutcheson, synonymous),
we should have the same kind of pleasurable feeling
towards a commodious house that we have towards a
generous or noble character. So with Evil and the
incommodious. Hence it is evident that there is an
instinctive feeling of Good on the presentation of
certain acts, which we separate from others as Moral.
In other words, there is a Moral Sense which, as an
inner determination, corresponds to those outer deter
minations, the external senses ; by which external
senses we mean, he says, ' a Determination of the
Mind to receive any idea from the presence of
an object which occurs to us, independently of our
Will!

To say that our pleasure in the moral qualities of
those great actions which adorn the past, arises from
our perceiving that they might have been advantage
ous to us had we lived in the time and place of their
performance, is untrue in fact ; for did our advantage,
interest, or natural good determine our feeling, the

Francis Hittcheson. 29

successful tyrant would engage our affection, not un
successful virtue.

But it may be maintained that our perception of
the beautiful and good, in actions not directly affect
ing our own 'natural good/ arises from the fact that
we know that whatever profits one part profits the
whole, and thus some small share may ultimately
reach each individual ; and that actions which con
template the good of the whole, if universally per
formed, would most effectually secure the good of
each individual, and of ourselves among others. To
this the answer is, that there is no such reflec
tion on the effect of acts, and that our approbation is
immediate. We admire more the act of Codrus than
that of the miser who buried a pot of gold which
we may have found, and who has thus contributed
much more to our personal advantage than the
former did. Further, it will be found that although
our Desire of Virtue in ourselves or others may be
counterbalanced by Interest, our sentiment or per
ception of its beauty and of the deformity of the
opposite cannot be influenced in this way.

Accordingly we conclude that we have in us a
Moral Sense directing our actions — by which is meant
not any innate idea or practical proposition, but a
' Determination of our minds to receive the simple
ideas of Approbation or Condemnation, from actions
observed, antecedently to any opinions of advantage
or loss to redound to ourselves from them, even as
we are pleased with a regular Form or harmonious

30 Francis Hutcheson.

Composition' in itself, and apart from advantage or
disadvantage.

Having shown that there is a Moral Sense, — that is,
an inner determination of Feeling, whereby one action
performed by others or by ourselves is immediately,
and without reference to any other considerations
whatsoever, felt to be beautiful or virtuous and an
other .deformed or vicious, Hutcheson next proceeds
to consider the Motive which impels to virtuous
acts.

The proposition which he now endeavours to prove
is, that every action which is morally good or evil is
supposed to flow from some affection towards rational
agents, that is, towards God or Man ; and that the
moment we separate an act from such presumed
affection it loses its moral character. Temperance,
for example, except in so far as it arises from obedi
ence to God, is not morally good, but simply an atten
tion to natural good, viz., health. Courage, except
when stimulated by love of country or hatred of
wrong, is not a virtue. So with Prudence (if it re
gards only individual interest) and Justice.

Hutcheson then argues thus : Virtue consists in cer
tain Affections, or actions consequent on these affec
tions ; and if it can be shown that these affections do
not spring from self-love or self-interest, it will appear
that ' Virtue is not pursued from any regard to the
interest or self-love of the pursuer/ All affections are
but modifications of Love and Hate. The former is
subdivided into Love of (i.e., which consists in) Com -

Francis Hiitcheson. 3 1

placence or Esteem, and Love of (i.e., which consists
in) Benevolence. Now, both these affections are
stirred in us immediately by the presentation of cer
tain qualities in objects, which qualities we must love.
No appeal to our advantage in respect of ' natural'
goods would induce us to the active exercise of esteem
or benevolence, although it might induce us to simu
late these affections. We conclude that self-interest,
in none of its forms, can lead us to that love of
others which is expressed by Esteem and Benevolence
in their various modifications, and that the originat
ing cause of these affections in us is a generous
Instinct, which comes into operation on the presen
tation of its objects, and which has nothing to do
with our self-love, or interest, or advantage, or natural
good, but only with itself and its object.

If this be the case with Esteem or Benevolence, it
is equally so with other virtuous affections, such as
Fear or Eeverence in presence of Goodness, Power,
and Justice. Were it possible to have these affections
towards a being simply from regard to the effect on
our interests, we could be bribed to entertain them
towards a being not good, which is by our nature
impossible. Here again, therefore, it appears that all
virtue flows from love to Persons, or some other
affection equally disinterested; and that, when we are
excited to virtuous actions, we are so from some
other motive than self-interest, just as when wefeel
the virtue of actions this feeling has been shown to
be independent of self-love or interest in any form.

32 Francis Hutcheson.

Now, we come to the question, ' Is Virtue pursued
because of the concomitant pleasure ? ' No, says
Hutcheson. For, first, if ' we pursue Virtue because
it is pleasant, then before we resolved to pursue it
there must have been a prior sense of Virtue, ante
cedent to ideas of advantage' upon which the know
ledge of this advantage is founded. Secondly,
some Virtue or the practising of some virtuous affec
tions, such as Sorrow, Anger, Compassion, is not
pleasant. These affections arise, and ought to arise,
on the occurrence of the suitable objects ; and pain
ful though they be, we could not justify to ourselves
the extinction of the affections while the objects
which roused them were present. It is not motives
of self-love, then, but the frame of our nature which
' determines us to be thus affected, and approves our
being so/ In like manner, the pleasant virtuous affec
tions are not chosen by us because they are pleasant,
but they arise simply on seeing their objects.

True, if we have practised virtuous affections, we
may, ' after the passion is over/ have pleasure in calm
reflection, from the consideration that ' we have been
in a disposition which, to our Moral Sense, appears
lovely and good : but this pleasure is never intended
in the heat of action, nor is it any motive exciting
to it.'

Having shown that the loving of virtuous actions
proceeds neither from Self-interest on the one side,
nor from the Pleasure of Virtue on the other, Hutche-

Francis Hutcheson. 33

son next proceeds to show that it is ' Some Deter
mination of our nature to study the good of others;
or some instinct antecedent to all reason (reason
ing) from interest which influences us to the love of
others, even as the Moral sense determines us to
approve the actions which flow from this love in
ourselves or others.'

This proposition is illustrated by the love of parents
for their children. If it be said that the parent suffers
when his child suffers, and that on this account he
is affected with a loving desire to remove the suffer
ing, is not this to say that love to the child causes
him to suffer with it ? If so, then Love is antecedent
to any conjunction of interest — the cause, not the
effect. Nature, in short, determines us to have affec
tion for him ; and if so, why not, though in a weaker
form, for all mankind ? In truth, where there is no
interfering personal interest, we shall find this Love
existing towards all rational agents in some degree.

Love of country is itself, to a great extent, only
love of individuals whom, in various relations, we
have seen, as members of the same community with
ourselves, manifesting those dispositions which our
Moral Sense compels us to approve. When there is
an apparent want of natural benevolence, it is be
cause the instinctive inclination is overpowered by
Self-interest (or, it ought to be added, by Anger or
Displeasure) ; but where ' this does not happen, we
shall find all mankind under its influence, although
with different degrees of strength, according to the

O O ' O

C

34 Francis Hutcheson.

nearer or more remote relations they stand in to each
other.

Before proceeding further, let us take a critical
retrospect of the leading features of our author's argu
ment. That man has an inner, instinctive, immediate
sense of pleasure or beauty, or by whatever name it
may be called, when he becomes cognisant in others
or in himself of those dispositions commonly called
Virtuous, in the limited sense of Benevolent, we think
Hutcheson has demonstrated. It flows from this, that
by the inner, instinctive, immediate feeling, man separ
ates the good from the bad in actions, in so far at least
as this specific quality is concerned, and discriminates
the approvable and the censurable. He has made
good his point against both what we would call Utili
tarian selfism, — that is, the reduction of the grounds
of approvableness, and therefore of Eight and Wrong
in conduct, to the perception of a mediate or imme
diate production of 'natural good' to the individual
approving ; as well as against what might be called
Utilitarian universalism, which reduces the grounds
of approvableness, and therefore of Eight and Wrong,
to the perceived tendency of the act to promote the
natural good or interests of the community, and so,
indirectly, of the individual, as a member of it. He
has also shown that this moral liking does not flow
from the perception that the acts and dispositions
approved originate in the Law of a superior being,
to be enforced by the increase or decrease of 'natural'

Francis Hiitcheson. 35

pleasures or pains, although this perception doubtless
supports, confirms, and intensifies the moral approba
tion or reprobation.

Our author, in next endeavouring to find the motives
of virtuous actions, is anxious to show that these
motives are not only not the desire of ' natural' good
or self-interest, but not even the pleasure of Virtue
itself. In his first object he partially succeeds, in the
second he fails. The fact that he only partially suc
ceeds in the one case and entirely fails in the other, is
due to an insufficient analysis of human nature and the
ends of action, and of the character of moral energizing.

As we have seen in the above statement of his sys
tem, he considers no acts moral or virtuous save those
which are prompted by an affection for rational agents.
This is to identify the moral with those acts and dis
positions only which are transitive, — and not only so,
l)ii t which are purposely transitive. His manifest
failure to force into this category the virtues of tem
perance, under which would be included, we presume,
chastity and purity, as well as general self-control,
courage, under which would fall self-sacrifice of the
body for the sake of the truth apart from affection
towards God, and prudence with its manifold sub
species, not to speak of virtues altogether ignored by
him, such as integrity, dignity, and magnanimity,
which have regard to self alone, and are not affections
toward other Eational agents, — is sufficient evidence
that he has rashly committed himself to a general

36 Francis Hntcheson.

conclusion regarding the nature of Virtue 'before
undertaking a sufficiently broad inquiry into the
specific ends of action and the Supreme end of all.
Had he separated the Intransitive from the Transi
tive ends, he would have been driven from the posi
tion which he took up, and which compelled him to
merge all virtue, all morality, in Love to mankind, or
(as in the case of the virtues of reverence, etc.) Love
to God.

This mode of accounting for the motives which
impel to virtuous conduct reacts, it will be at once
seen, on the theory of a Moral Sense, by reducing the
action and range of that sense simply to a feeling of
immediate pleasure at discerning Love in others to
wards Eational agents. It would follow that all those
virtues falling under the general names Prudence,
Integrity, Purity, must be discriminated as approv-
able on other grounds ; that is, not immediately by a
sense, but mediately by the understanding. From
this a conclusion would follow, which Hutcheson
would have himself strongly deprecated, namely, that
these virtues are approved not in themselves, but
because they promote our lower interests, or the lower
interests of others.1

Further, to say that we do not pursue virtue for the
sake of the pleasure of Virtue, because to do so itself
presupposes a ' Sense of Virtue antecedent to ideas of
advantage/ is to employ the word ' advantage7 in a

1 It may be observed, in passing, that virtues may be displayed in
relation to irrational agents as well as to rational.

Francis Hutcheson. 37

connexion in which it has no proper significance. This
word has been generally used by Hutcheson as syn
onymous with 'promotive of some natural good or
lower interest other than the affection, or sentiment,
or what not, which is immediately the object of ap
probation or of pursuit/ The opinion which Hutche
son attempts to redargue, however, is that the Vir
tuous disposition or act is in itself pleasurable, and
desired because of the pleasure which it yields to
the agent. Hutcheson confounds the history of the
origin of the virtuous dispositions (that is to say, of
the instinct of benevolence, for, as we have seen, all
virtue is, in his opinion, merged in this instinct) with
these same dispositions, as elements in the moral con
flict, which is always transacting itself in the breast of
every man. The virtuous or benevolent affections,
it is true, like all the passions, arise only in con
junction with their objects ; it is others as loved,
not the love of others, that we first instinctively
know ; again, it is a supreme and perfect Being rever
enced, not the reverence of a supreme and perfect
Being, which first comes within the range of our
mental experience. But these mental states once
experienced, we recognise in ourselves the Love of
others, and reverence towards the Supreme as in
stinctive moral forces working in us, and presenting
along with other forces a claim of right in the court
of Will. Thus it happens that when the rational will
has to act, the same object may be to it the external
recipient of a selfish, a malignant, a benevolent, a

38 Francis Hutcheson.

heroic, a pious or an impious act ; and the question
to be settled is this, with which of these dispositions
to act shall I here and now identify my Will, which
is myself? These dispositions, primary, instinctive,
derivative, simple, or complex, are realities — the
objects which I (that is, the Will) am first to seize.
But they of necessity carry with them the external
objects. It belongs essentially to the notion of them
that they externalize themselves, and connect self and
not-self in a completed act by means of the uniting
sentiment. Without this union, the identification of
self with the sentiment is not at all accomplished in
the region of the moral, but only in the region of
knowledge.

Hutcheson, it seems to us, was afraid to recognise
the pleasure of virtue as a motive to virtue ; because
by so doing he would have separated virtuous action
from self-interested action only by the kind of plea
sure which it yielded to the agent. Thus would be
laid the foundation of a personal eudsemonism which
might justify to itself any course of action on the
simple ground of idiosyncratic preference. And to
this danger, and to a loose theory of obligation and
of law, Hutcheson unquestionably did expose himself,
notwithstanding his efforts to avoid it.

If we look, again, at his argument from the point
of view of the self-reference of Virtue, we shall find
that, in endeavouring so eagerly as he does to show
that the virtuous or benevolent act does not origi
nate in a desire for the happiness it yields to the

Francis Hutcheson. 39

agent, but in the love the agent has of the happi
ness of others, Hutcheson overlooks the distinction
between Self-love and Self-interest; and this leads
to much confusion of statement and much logomachy.
His two leading arguments in refutation of what
he believes to be a selfish theory of virtue are — (1.)
That the virtuous affection arises in us only on the
presentation of the fitting object, and cannot be
called into operation by an act of volition merely ;
that, in short, it is of the nature of an instinct.
(2.) That when we do generous offices, we do not
intend our own happiness but the happiness of
others; and that, in truth, the contemplation of
our own happiness would destroy the moral or vir
tuous character of the benevolent act. The answer
to the first refutation is that although psychologically
Hutcheson is correct, yet it is equally a psycho
logical truth that we can, by an act of will, initiate
a movement towards an affection or sentiment as
an object. The answer to the second is, that in
seeking the good of others, we, by his own show
ing, do really seek our own highest felicity — the in
dulgence of the love of the good of others ; and this
without regard to the consequent and retrospective
approbation of ourselves for having sought the good
of others. Indeed, the fact that we retrospectively
approve ourselves for benevolent acts, can find in
Hutcheson's theory no consistent explanation : self-
approbation becomes lost in the instinctive pleasure
of the act of loving, and identified with it, Reflec-

4-O Francis Hutcheson.

tion on this might, by bringing to light the ground
of approbation, have suggested the true motive to
the virtuous act. To separate an act done for
the sake of the good of others (apart from any
ulterior or lower interest) from a subjective pleasure
in the good of others, and in the particular act
done, is impossible, except for purposes of thought.
I may cultivate in myself a mental condition of
Love towards my fellow-men, and delude myself by
indulging in this mood, and usurping to myself
the further pleasure of self-approbation for my vir
tuous disposition. But in so doing, Benevolence is
present to my mind only as an object of knowledge,
or it may be that it expends itself on subject-objects
purely imaginary. To seek after this pleasure is not
to cultivate benevolence, but rather, indeed, to weaken
it, and to substitute for that virtue a morbid and will-
enervating consciousness of the possibility of exercising
the virtue. On the other hand, to seek to do good to
others from any other motive than a purely moral one,
such as the realizing in our consciousness of the plea
sure of the benevolent act, is itself also an act without
virtue, as Hutcheson himself would admit. In short,
there is in man the antagonism of the lower and the
higher, self-interest and self-love, — the one strong and
powerful, the other lofty and supreme ; and when we
seek the supreme joy of our nature, we do so at great
cost, and by an effort of free rational volition, which
constitutes its moral worth, its virtuous character, and
its disinterestedness. That, in certain classes of action,

Francis Hutcheson. 41

the good of others should be precisely the quality
which yields the Agent a supreme felicity ; that
we cannot contemplate the object of our activity as
happy, save in and through the subject as happy, and
vice versa; that, in short, the subjective end and the
objective end concur and are inseparable, does not
touch the morality or virtue of the active desire, or of
the election of it by the will as a motive force.

Having discussed the subjects of a Moral Sense
and the Motives to Virtuous action, Hutcheson next
proceeds to inquire what common quality is found to
be the essential characteristic of all those acts which
are approved by the Moral Sense. The answer, viz.,
Benevolence or Love — has been already given in the
course of discussing prior questions.

When this doctrine has to be applied to the wor
ship and fear of God, it breaks down, in our opinion,
by omitting from view the morality which resides in
the mere act of submission to a recognised superior.
The effort made to make this a case of love contra
dicts history and the facts of human nature.

Especially forced is the attempt to reduce those
virtues which are usually referred to enlightened Self-
Love to acts into which benevolence enters, and must
enter, in order to constitute them moral. For ex
ample, he says that since the individual is a part of
the whole, a due regard to himself is thus far a regard
for the whole, even where the good of the whole is not
contemplated. Not only so ; a want of due self love

42 Francis Hutcheson.

would be universally pernicious, and self-love within
limits prescribed by the universal good is, therefore,
moral and approvable. This is a violent attempt to
justify his reduction of all virtue to benevolence.

In other parts of his writings, Hutcheson occa
sionally extends the operation of the Moral Sense to
those powers and dispositions which have to do with
the moral perfection of the mind possessing them,
and we consequently expect to find it brought to
bear on those intransitive acts which constitute so
large a part of the virtuous character. But he quickly
loses sight of this relation of the Moral Sense, and
characteristically confines its activity to the detection
of benevolence in all good affections of whatsoever
kind. In so far as it detects this quality it approves
them ; in so far as it finds it wanting it is indifferent;
in so far as it finds it contravened it condemns.1 Even
veracity, candour, fortitude, and so forth, although
they ' seem to be approved immediately/ are in truth
approved because of their connexion with the disin
terested affection of benevolence. Occasionally, it is
true, he slips into such expressions as f these [intran
sitive virtues] are immediately approved ;' they * are
immediately recommended to our approbation by the
constitution of our moral faculty' (p. 67) : but such
incidental expressions, which are generally contra
dicted, implicitly or explicitly, in the same paragraph,
only furnish evidence of the inadequacy of his ana
lysis, and show that he himself had a dim impression

1 Lectures, p. 65.

Francis Hutcheson. 43

of the partial operation of the Moral Sense as ex
pounded by him, and of its insufficiency to cover the
whole nature of man.

<<•••' ifj ' .' »,. '.<:•' i/ . • , • i*! t ) ...

Hutcheson next proceeds to show that the moral
excellency of actions is, where ' equal degrees of happi
ness are expected to proceed from the action, in propor
tion to the number of persons to whom the Happiness
shall extend ; ' and is led to the conclusion that ' that
action is best which accomplishes the greatest happi
ness for the greatest numbers, and that worst which
in the like manner occasions their misery/ Again,
where consequences are mixed, 'that action is good
whose good effects preponderate over the evil/ By
consequences we are to understand not only the direct
effects of an action, ' but also all those events which
otherwise would not have happened/ Hence we see
that those actions are recommended to us by our
Moral Sense as ' the most perfectly virtuous/ ' which
appear to have the most universal unlimited tendency
to the greatest and most extensive happiness of all
the rational agents to whom our influence can ex
tend/

The exclusive contemplation of the instinct of
benevolence as comprising all virtue, and as the sole
object of the approbation of the Moral Sense, now
begins to bear its fruit in Hutcheson's theory. The
non-distinguishing of the virtuous sentiment of the
moral agent from the object of his sentiment is also
at work, and helps to bring into view the inadequacy

44 Francis Hutcheson.

of the original analysis from which the whole specu
lation started. For if the instinct of Benevolence
is identical with Virtue, and if it be the object
loved, and not the love of the object — the happiness
effected, not the active sentiment of good-will, which
is the object of approbation to the Moral Sense when
it contemplates moral agents, it follows that the
virtue of an act is a measurable quantity, and is
measured by the quantity of happiness which flows
from it. This consequence of his premisses Hutcheson
accepts. The premisses themselves we have already
criticised, and the consequences we might therefore
pass by. But they suggest two remarks which find
a fitting place here :—

First. We would observe that the moral purpose of
the agent, and the act itself in its external incidence,
are confounded. The claims of Morality and the
demands of the Moral Sense are, it seems to us, satis
fied, when the agent selects that motive which is the
highest, and energizes under its direction. The history
of the act is a separate question. A rational being is,
of course, bound to see that the benevolent purpose
has a benevolent effect, and his volition is not bene
volent if he has no regard to this. Without this the
moral energizing of the Will is an abortive energy.
But it is the quality of this energizing which is the
measure of the morality, not the number of persons
who may be the happier or the better for it.

Some of the consequences of this quantitative con
ception of Virtue the author sees when he is driven

Francis Hutcheson. 45

to accept the greater quantity of good on the whole,
as the only ground for abstaining from doing in
justice to the worthless for the benefit of those who
are morally their superiors, and from giving false testi
mony in a court of justice in favour of those whom
we know to be innocent ! A further consequence,
namely, the inferior Virtue of the agent whose bene
volent acts have a narrow influence, as compared with
the man whose benevolent acts are productive of
greater felicity, confronts him ; and he exercises much
ingenuity in constructing mathematical canons for the
assaying of personal virtue, by taking into account
the various factors, Benevolence, the Moment of Good,
and the Ability. It also follows, from his principles,
that if a man, through a pure act of selfishness, or,
it may be of hatred, purposes the misery of others,
the Vice of that man is determined by the quantity
of evil which he effects. Such results must always
flow from a confounding of Agents and Acts, and
from an insufficient Analysis of the inner moral his
tory of man.

Secondly. We would remark that, according to
Hutcheson, Virtue is Benevolence, and Benevolence
Virtue. Benevolence is an Instinct, and Virtue, con
sequently, is also an Instinct. To what, then, is the
Moral Sense reduced ? To a feeling of higher plea
sure in contemplating the Instinct of Benevolence
than in contemplating other instincts. This separate
faculty exists merely to tell us that Benevolence
is better than Self-Interest. An admission of this

46 Francis Hntcheson.

nature New-Utilitarianism itself would scarcely hesi
tate to make. For the ' Social Sense,1 in which Mr.
Mill finds the ultimate sanction and ground of Moral
acts and of Virtue, is capable of being interpreted as
Benevolence towards rational agents ; and were we to
accept this interpretation, the departure from Hutche-
son's doctrine as Intuitional would be inappreciable.
On every other point, in truth, save the question of
an inner Sense (and even here the opposition is
shadowy), we find the doctrine of Mr. Mill's Treatise
on Utilitarianism, and of the most advanced views
of Bentham in Hutcheson's Inquiry, developed with
more precision, and argued with more regard to pos
sible objections. We are thus driven to ask the
question, — In such a system, does a Moral Sense,
strictly so called, find any place at all ? It seems
to be reduced to an instinctive pleasure in the ex
hibition of an instinct, — a pleasure of a more in
tense kind than the pleasure which the agent has
in other instincts.1 It is admitted to be no guide
to a man, in each particular act of life, much less
in complex actions, or in 'the natural tendency of
acts to good or evil' consequences. It consequently
fails to discriminate the Right, and to be a guide to
virtuous conduct. The work of guidance is delegated
to the understanding, which, having fixed the external
standard, — the 'greatest happiness on the whole/-
discovers, by a process of observation and reasoning,
those acts which best fit the standard. The sole

1 System of Moral Philoso]^Jty, p. 62.

Francis Hutcheson. 47

function of the so-called Moral Sense, in short, in so
far as it is distinct from purely intellectual operations,
is * to determine us to approve benevolence when it
appears in any action, and to hate the contrary/1

All this departure from the line of discovery on
which he first entered, and by pursuing which he
would have carried forward Shaftesbury and deve
loped a moral system richer, more adequate, more
full of the humanities than that of his contem
porary Butler, is caused by his dread of recognising
the subjective pleasure of beneficence as a virtuous
end and motive of action. ' Not the pleasure which
accompanies beneficence/ but the ' love of others/
he maintains, is true Virtue ; as if the pleasure of
beneficence could exist (save as an object of know
ledge) apart from loving others ; as if the active love
of others did not itself constitute the very notion of
beneficence. It was reserved to Butler to make a
great advance beyond Hutcheson, and this advance
would have been secured had he done nothing else
than point out that Self -Love and Benevolence were
not to be opposed, but only to be distinguished. In
truth, one is sometimes disposed to doubt whether
Hutcheson ever attained to a true conception of what
was meant by allowing supremacy to the benevo
lent affections on the ground of their contributing to
our own highest enjoyment. The following passages
from his last and most matured work, his System of
Moral Philosophy, give indications of this : -

1 Inquiry, sect. 4.

48 Francis Hutcheson.

' Can that be deemed the sole ultimate determina
tion, the sole ultimate end, which the mind, in the
exercise of its noblest powers, can calmly resolve with
inward approbation deliberately to counteract ? Are
there not instances of men who have voluntarily sacri
ficed their lives, without thinking of any other state
of existence, for the sake of their friends or their
country ? Does not every heart approve this temper
and conduct, and admire it the more, the less pre
sumption there is of the love of glory and posthumous
fame, or of any sublimer private interest mixing itself
with the generous affection ? Does not the admira
tion rise higher the more deliberately such resolutions
are formed and executed ? All this is unquestionably
true, and yet would be absurd and impossible if self-
interest of any kind is the sole ultimate termination
of all calm desire. There is therefore another ultimate
determination which our souls are capable of, destined
to be also an original spring of the calmest and most
deliberate purposes of action ; a desire of communi
cating happiness, an ultimate good-will not referred
to any private interest, and often operating without
such reference.

' In those cases where some inconsistency appears
between these two determinations, the moral faculty
at once points out and recommends the glorious, the
amiable part ; not by suggesting prospects of future
interest of a sublime sort by pleasures of self-approba
tion or of praise. It recommends the generous part
by an immediate, undefinable perception ; it approves

Francis Hutchcson. 49

the kind ardour of the heart in the sacrificing even
life itself, and that even in those who have no hopes
of surviving, or no attention to future life in another
world. And thus, where the moral sense is in its full
vigour, it makes the generous determination to public
happiness the supreme one in the soul with that com
manding power which it is naturally destined to
exercise/

In these sentences Hutchesori seems to confound
those collateral felicities and motives which accom
pany the benevolent affections with the felicity of
benevolent affections and activity in themselves.

It is not necessary to our present purpose to follow
the arguments by which Hutcheson endeavours to
prove that Benevolence universally receives approba
tion, and the want of it reprobation ; and that seeming
exceptions are to be traced to the mere semblance of
Benevolence having been mistaken for the reality.
Every moral theory has to accept the fact of moral
growth and of diversity of moral practices, and to
account for them ; a superfluous labour, it seems to
us, except in so far as it throws light on the history
of ethical science. For it is at once evident that
whatever moral forces man may bring with him
into the world, the material in which he works is
so various and so manifold that the moral issue in
maxims of conduct for the individual and the State
must take the colour of circumstances, and accept the
limitations of experience. We pass on to the next

D

50 Francis Hutcheson.

subject of speculative interest, our author's theory of
Obligation.

In this region of moral inquiry, we again gladly find
ourselves in the company of the vindicator of a Moral
Sense as innate in Man. The departure from this
doctrine and its consequences, which pervades two-
thirds of his Inquiry, and which is, to our thinking,
quite inconsistent with his leading position, here
ceases, and in his concluding chapter, on the Obliga
tion to Virtue, if not satisfactory, he is at least
original and in harmony with himself. If there be,
he says, an instinctive determination to approve vir
tuous (benevolent) action, and a determination to be
uneasy with ourselves if we perform the contrary of
it, this constitutes an Obligation. It does not take
the form of a Law proceeding from a superior, and
accompanied by sanctions ; but it is none the less an
Obligation implanted in us. And, even should we be
of opinion that obligation can be properly said to exist
only where there is a motive touching our Self-interest
so closely as to determine us to a specific course of
action, the obligation is then to be found in re
flection on the pleasure which Virtue (benevolence)
yields, and the uneasiness and dissatisfaction which
accompanies and follows action contrary to virtue. A
further motive of self-interest may be found in a con
sideration of the manner in which the good of the whole
affects each individual, and consequently ourselves.
We have preferred to use our own words in setting
forth Hutcheson's view of the obligation to virtue, be-

Francis Hutcheson. 51

cause, by so doing, we are able to bring more into re
lief its bearing on our previous exposition. If mental
weakness, or ignorance, or selfish passions overpower
the instinctive tendency to virtue, the business of the
moral philosopher, says our author, is to enlighten the
understanding, arid to show that it is our true self-
interest and advantage to be virtuous ; not that
the philosopher thereby hopes to stir to virtue,
which is beyond his power, and because virtue
followed from a perception of its advantage would
be no longer virtue, but merely to remove the
obstacles which obstruct the free movement of the
innate tendency. Law, and laws with their external
sanctions, may, in such cases, be necessary for the
support of virtue. That law or laws, however, do not
constitute any course of action good and right, is
evident from the fact that we are constantly inquir
ing into the justice of laws, human and divine ; and
speak of the laws of God as just, and holy, and good,
not because they are His will, but because they tend
to the good of man.1

Thus, Hutcheson's answer to the question, 'Why
should a man act virtuously (benevolently) ?' is, 'Be
cause he is so constituted that he has the pleasure of
self-approbation if he so acts, and the displeasure of
self-reprobation if he does not so act/ Other collateral
and external obligatory forces may and do exist, are

1 Hutcheson makes a distinction between constraint and obligation, in
which he is not quite successful ; and proceeds to apply his doctrine of
Virtue (benevolence) to Perfect and Imperfect Obligations, making use of
the correlative terms and notions, Perfect and Imperfect Eights.

52 Francis Hutcheson.

brought into operation in every community, and are
probably never quite lost sight of by any individual ;
but the inner, central, and primary obligation is that
given above. But suppose a man should prefer that
aggregate of happiness which unmixed self-interest
can secure for him, and put up with the (to him)
trifling pain of offended Benevolence, what is to be
done ? We then bring in, Hutcheson would say, the
external sanctions of society, and the ultimate sanc
tion of Divine approval and condemnation, — the law
of Virtue being the law of God, — and the refractory
agent submits, under the influence of these external
forces, to yield an external conformity. But, in such a
case, he has manifestly not yielded to the obligation of
virtue in itself : he has recognised no supreme autho
rity in it : he is hedged in to virtuous action by con
siderations human and divine, which lie outside virtue.
In short, Hutcheson does not analyse the notion of
Moral Law, and hence a conspicuous defect in his
theory of obligation.

His analysis of ' Merit/ to which he next calls our
attention, is vitiated by his conception of Virtue as
something identical with Virtuous Sentiment, and,
above all, with one particular Virtuous Sentiment,
and by the further association of the notion of merit
with a deserved recompense proceeding from God.

In casting a retrospect over the preceding pages,
we must at once admit that Hutcheson occupies a
distinguished place in the history of Ethical Science.

Francis Hutcheson. 53

A certain portion of the ground traversed by him has
been thoroughly occupied, and forms a starting point
for other thinkers. He has proved that there is in
man a Moral Sense, in the signification of a Feeling
of immediate, pleasure on the perception of certain
acts and affections, and a Feeling of immediate dis
pleasure on the perception of their contraries. He has
proved also that this sense is uniform to this extent—
that benevolence is a quality universally approved in
ourselves and others. And, further, he has shown that
this benevolence is an instinct of man, having for its im
mediate object the happiness of others as an ultimate
end, just as self-love has for object our own happi
ness. Nor has he rendered slight service to Morals by
endeavouring to construct a theory of obligation on
the basis of the inner affection or instinct apart from
external sanctions and arbitrary law of whatsoever
kind. Unfortunately his native subtlety of mind,
concurring with a disposition of peculiar amiability,
caused him, it seems to us, to overreach himself, and
to fall into errors, several of which we have already
noticed, and which again, in their more general aspects,
fall to be pointed out in entering on a criticism of
his contemporary, Bishop Butler.1

1 Not the least of Hutchesou's services to morals is his subtle and
successful criticism of Clarke ami Woolaston.

54 Bishop Butler.

THE ETHICAL THEOEY OF BISHOP BUTLER.1

THE current of philosophical thought in the end of
the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth
century set in the direction of the inquiry, ' What con
stitutes Morality or Virtue?' — in other words, 'What is
that common quality in acts which makes them Moral
or Virtuous V To combat, by superseding, the selfish
and Utilitarian theories of morals, was the purpose of
both Hutcheson and Butler, and of many other writers.
The cognate question, ' By what inner process of In
telligence or Feeling do we cognize the virtuous act V
was to a large extent involved in the inquiry into
Virtue. Hutcheson satisfied himself by finding an ex
ternal standard of the virtuous act, which was free, as
he rejoiced to think, from all taint of Self, and distin
guished by the fact that other rational agents than Self
furnished the motives to Virtue. In trying to work out
his theory, he made such violent efforts to escape selfism,
that he fell by anticipation into a kind of refined Ben
thamism, barely recovering himself when he came to the
question of the Obligation to perform the virtuous act.

1 To what extent Butler was indebted to Hutcheson does not appear.
The Moral treatise of the former appeared in 1725, and in 1726 appeared
the first edition of Butler's Sermons, which, however, had been preached
some years before. In the preface to his second work, On the Nature and
Conduct of the Passions, Hutcheson says, — ' I hope it is a good omen of
something still better on this subject to be expected in the learned world,
that Mr. Butler, in his Sermons in the Rolls Chapel, has done so much
justice to the wise and good order of our Nature.'

Bishop Butler. 55

This was not the sole defect of his theory : the 'Moral
Sense/ or Conscience, as exhibited in his argument,
falls short of its proper function as a discerner of good
and evil, except in the one department of benevolent
activity. The system fails also to furnish a sufficient
primary obligation to the virtuous act, and reduces
duty to a question of secondary and external sanc
tions. It fails, further, in its definition of Virtue, and,
like Shaftesbury's, is too narrow in its conception of
the ends of human action. These defects are to be
traced to the author's abhorrence of any form of sub
jective ethics, by which the motives and obligations
of human conduct might by any possibility be re
ferred to the pleasure which the agent has in Virtue.
Had he taken a more impartial view of man's nature,
— perhaps had he been a less amiable and virtuous
man himself, — he might have seen that reference to
self is not necessarily selfism ; that self-interest and
self-love are by no means identical terms ; and that
action in accordance with the latter demands all the
self-abnegation which even a Stoic would require.

It was Butler's merit to endeavour to make good
these defects, as well as those other shortcomings
which we have pointed out in Shaftesbury ; to seize
in one comprehensive grasp the whole emotional and
intellectual nature of man in its reference to the moral
condition of the subject-self; to affirm a primary
source of obligation in the form of a dictum of the
Moral Sense or Conscience, and in the same Con
science a power of discerning right from wrong, not

56 Bishop Butler.

merely in actions benevolent, but in every kind of
action, whether having its ultimate issue in the agent
himself or in those outside him. He escaped Selfism
on the one side, and objective Utilitarianism on the
other, by placing the source and the authority of the
Eight in the arbitrary dicta of Conscience, and by
showing that the highest end of action was confor
mity to Duty, on which happiness was only an
attendant.

Such are the general characteristics of Butler's
theory ; and yet, if we are not to remain content with
what appears on the surface and is conspicuous to
the most cursory reader, but demand things instead
of words, reasoned conclusions instead of asseverations,
we shall find it by no means an easy task to give a
clear, adequate, well-balanced statement of the author's
system. He is very far from making a consistent use
of terms, nor does he always introduce the various
points of his argument in the connexion in which we
should expect to find them. These and other defects,
which belong to him as a writer on Morals, are, doubt
less, to a large extent due to the form into which he
has thrown his speculations. Had he attempted a
more systematic exposition he would have supplied
many defects which the mere attempt to systematize
would have revealed. It is a remarkable tribute to
his strong intellectual grasp and deep insight, that
views so imperfectly expounded should have held
their place as on the whole the best British statement
of the intuitive theory of Morals.

Bishop Butler. 57

Butler considers it to be the first duty of the
Moralist to inquire what the particular nature of man
is — its 'several parts/ and their economy or consti
tution, — and thence to determine what course of life it
is which is correspondent to his whole nature. Such
an inquiry, he maintains, will reveal the fact that Vice
is a violation of that nature, and that Virtue consists
in following it.

The economy or constitution of any particular
nature, and consequently of the nature of man, is a
whole made up of several parts ; but these several
parts taken together do not give the idea of the
system or economy, unless we include in the notion
of the whole the relations and respects which the
several parts have to each other.

The several parts of the inward economy of man
are Appetites, Passions, Affections, and, in addition
to these, the 'Principle of Reflection,' or Conscience.
But these several parts do not give us an idea of the
inward economy of man until we realize their rela
tions to each other. In investigating this we find
that all the parts are subordinated to the ' Principle
of Reflection' or Conscience, which is supreme. Thus
we attain to a complete idea of the economy of man :
and ' from the idea itself it will as fully appear that
the end of the economy of man is Virtue, as that the
end of the economy of a watch is the measuring of
time. So that we shall find that nothing is so con
trary to man's nature as vice, and nothing more
accordant with it than virtue,' provided we keep in

58 Bishop Butler.

mind that by * nature' we mean not merely the
several parts of man's ' frame/ but the constitution of
those parts relatively to the ' Principle of Reflection/
or Conscience.

Comparing man with the brutes, Butler illustrates
his own theory and repeats his argument, and if we
would estimate these correctly, we must once more
accompany him in his exposition : — Mankind, he says,
have various instincts and 'principles of action/ just as
brute creatures have, some leading most directly and
immediately to the good of the community, and some
most directly to private good. Man has several, which
brutes have not, particularly Reflection or Conscience
— ' an approbation of some principles or actions, and a
disapprobation of others/ ' Brutes obey their instincts
or principles of action according to certain rules,
suppose the constitution of their body and the objects
around them. The generality of mankind also obey
their instincts and principles of action, all of them —
those propensions we call good, as well as the bad —
according to the same rules, namely the constitution
of their body and the external circumstances they are
in.' Now brutes, in acting in accordance with the
rules before mentioned— their bodily constitution and
circumstances — act suitably to their whole nature.
Mankind also, in acting thus, would act suitably to
their 'whole nature if no more were to be said of man's
nature than what has now been said ; if that, as it is a
true, were also a complete and adequate account of his
nature. But it is not a complete and adequate account.

Bishop Butler. 59

In addition to these instincts and principles of action
which promote the interests of self, but do not flow
from ' Self-love/ and those which promote the interests
of others, but do not flow from Benevolence, there are
the principles of 'Self-love' and 'Benevolence;' the
former self-regarding, the latter other-regarding. Fur
ther, man is so constituted that he cannot intelligently
seek the objects of self-love without embracing Bene
volence and the social affections. Now, to follow the
suggestions of all these ' instincts' and ' principles' is,
in a certain sense, natural ; but when we consider
that, as a matter of fact, to gratify ' cool and reason
able self-love' is manifestly to act in conformity with
nature, while to gratify appetites and passions in oppo
sition to the dictates of ' cool self-love' is manifestly
to contravene nature, inasmuch as it ignores the rela
tions of the parts of human nature, it follows that
one inward principle, that of ' cool self-love' is superior
to others, is of a 'superior nature' or kind: and,
also, that this natural superiority really exists quite
apart from the degree of strength of the various prin
ciples, and this without particular consideration of
conscience.

But this is not all. For there is still this other Prin
ciple in the human constitution, — namely, Eeflection
or Conscience, — which, compared with the rest as they
all stand together in the nature of man, ' plainly bears
on it' marks of authority over all the rest, and claims
the ' absolute direction of them all to allow or forbid
their gratification.' Authority, says Butler, as distin-

60 Bishop Butler.

guished from strength ; for a disapprobation of Eeflec-
tion is in itself a principle manifestly superior to a
mere propension — that is to say, superior in kind
or nature, not in degree of force. If this be so, it
follows that to allow no more to this superior prin
ciple or ' part of our nature' than to other parts, to
let it guide and govern only occasionally, and in com
mon with the rest as its turn happens to come, and
from the temper and circumstances one happens to be
in, — this is not to act conformably to the constitution
of man.

The ' Principle of Eeflection' or Conscience asserts,
in the presence of consciousness, a natural supremacy
over all other instincts and principles ; and to this
natural supremacy and inherent prerogative, 'it is
owing that every man may find within him the rule
of Right/ as well as the ' obligation to follow it/ This
principle of reflection is frequently, but without deli
berate purpose, spoken of by Butler as the principle
of Reflex Approbation, when he has occasion to refer
to the discrimination of the Eight from the Wrong.
In speaking of Shaftesbury, for example, he says that
that author thought it a plain matter of fact ' that
mankind upon reflection felt an approbation of what
was good and a disapprobation of the contrary ; as it
undoubtedly is, and which none could deny but from
mere affectation.' So much for Butler's doctrine of
the ends of action, the criterion of Eight and the mode
of discriminating it.

The Obligation to do that which is approved is

Bishop Butler. 6 1

inherent in the Reflex Act according to our author :
and we have only to take into account i the authority
and obligation which is a constituent part of the
Reflex Approbation, and it will undeniably follow,
though a man should doubt of everything else, yet
that he would still remain under the nearest and most
certain obligation to the practice of virtue : an obli
gation implied in the very idea of virtue, in the very
idea of Reflex Approbation/ Certain propensions, self
ish or other-regarding, may be as strong as the Prin
ciple of Reflection, but the latter is, by its very nature,
manifestly superior to them, ' insomuch that you
cannot form a notion of this faculty, Conscience, with
out taking in judgment, direction, and superintendency.'
' To preside and govern, from the very economy and
constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength
as it has right ; had it power as it has manifest
authority, it would absolutely govern the world/

On the question of Conscience as a distinct faculty,
there can be no doubt that Bishop Butler held the
popular doctrine. With him the Principle of Reflec
tion is to be confounded neither with self-conscious
ness nor with feeling in any form. At the same time,
he admits that it shares some of its characteristics with
ordinary reflection, for in an attempt which he makes
to define it, he distinguishes it as * a particular kind of
reflection,' and in the Dissertation on Virtue he speaks
of it as including the ' understanding' and the ' heart/

If ethical questions, which are in their nature dis-

62 Bishop Butler.

tinct, are in the above analysis occasionally allowed
to cross each other, the reader may be assured that it
is impossible altogether to avoid this confusion, if
Butler's theory is to be given as conceived by him
self. It would be possible, doubtless, so to evolve his
doctrine as to give it a quasi-scientific form, and
thereby a greater consistency of expression ; but any
attempt in this direction would expose us to the dan
ger of losing sight of our author altogether, and
inadvertently substituting interpretations of his theory
for the theory itself.

In the exposition which we have given there have
come into sufficient prominence those characteristics
of Butler's argument which have obtained for it so
wide a reception. We shall, accordingly, confine our
criticism to the exhibition of its defects ; and we shall
best show what these are by directing attention to the
answers which it affords to some of the leading moral
questions.

The first and most conspicuous defect in the argu
ment, is the adoption by Butler of what is neither
more nor less than the 'vulgar' Conscience in its
complex form under the name of the 'Principle of
Reflection.' No attempt is made to analyse either
this notion or, incidentally, any of the elements which
enter into it. The same remarks apply to the highest
object which the Conscience can contemplate — virtue.
Hence not a little vicious circular reasoning and much
perplexity to any reader who insists on a precise use
of terms. At one time the Principle of Reflection

Bishop Butler. 63

appears as a simple principle, power, or instinct, unde
fined and unlimited ; at another it does duty as the
Feeling of approbation and disapprobation ; again as
the discriminator of right from wrong ; at another
as the authoritative or law-giving sentiment, while
occasionally it is represented as discharging functions
which belong rather to the understanding. This
defective analysis, however, of the central subject
and object of discussion is not a special characteristic
of Butler, but is shared with him by a large proportion
both of intuitional and utilitarian Moralists. When
ever it is met with, it must always be impossible to
find a true record or accurate exposition of the
phenomena of ethical consciousness.

The position in the moral economy which Butler
assigns to Self-love next attracts our attention. The
distinction between Selfishness and Self-love solves,
for him, the question of interested and disinterested
action by justifying his statement, that interest edness
and disinterestedness are not properly to be opposed,
but only to be distinguished. Self-love embraces a
due consideration of our whole nature, including the
benevolent and other sentiments ; and as it thus
necessarily includes the good of others, it is incorrectly
confounded with Selfishness. So far as it goes, the
distinction made by Butler is valuable ; but it has
the defect of not adequately explaining, either to the
common consciousness or the scientific, the real ground
on which any particular act is called ' disinterested/
although by its implicit assumption of the duality of

64 Bishap Butler.

human feeling it points the way to the explana
tion.

Still less success has attended our author in separat
ing acts in respect of their quantitative or qualitative
elements : a defect in his argument, which from the
first precludes a consistent distinguishing of those
manifestations of Self-Love which are, properly speak
ing, prudential from those which are in a special
sense moral

The most fertile source of confusion, however, is to
be found in the position assigned to Self-love as a
regulative principle. ' Cool self-love/ it would appear,
determines the act which is to be preferred : in other
words, it is competent to determine duty : but if it
does this on grounds of Self-love, it follows that the
sovereign end of man is happiness, virtue being com
prehended as an end only in so far as it is the
supreme happiness. Not only so : in the act of deter
mining duty it must ipso facto exercise a governing
power over the Principle of Eeflection itself. This
great Principle, accordingly, while it may still retain
its place in the human economy, as what may.be called
an instinct of Reflection, can demand consideration
from ' cool Self-love ' only as one of many claimants.
Doubtless its right to be distinguished from the ' pro-
pensions' as of a 'superior nature' to them would
remain ; and this characteristic would have to be
taken into account by Self-love. But, even allowing
for this, it seems clear that Conscience and Virtue
would fall under the higher genus Self-love, which
would control these ' principles' no less than all

Bistiop Butler. 65

others. If, on the other hand, ' cool Self-love' be not
supreme, the 'Principle of Reflection' supersedes its
action entirely, not only in its larger acceptation, but
even if interpreted as equivalent only to Prudence.
For this principle being (^-discriminating, and indi
cating instantaneously and with unerring finger not
only generic qualities of acts, but the Tightness of each
particular act, Self love becomes superfluous in the
economy of man, and its pretensions irrelevant and
impertinent. And yet so far is this limited and sub
ordinate action of Self-love from being Butler's under
standing of its function, that a careful perusal of
different parts of his sermons will satisfy the reader
that he regards it as not only embracing within its
legitimate sphere of action the sentiments, but as
being (l.) reflective, (2.) perceptive of ends, and
(3.) capable of giving to various ends that proportion
ate importance on which throughout his writings he
so frequently insists. If such be its function, it is con
sequently entitled to take cognisance of the Principle
of Keflection, Approbation, or Conscience itself (all
these are, with Butler, identical terms) and to assign
it its true place and its proper influence. It thus
becomes a conscience above a conscience.

The Principle of Reflection, Butler would doubtless
say, if pressed by hostile criticism, designates that
which is Duty and Virtue, without regard to Happi
ness ; while Self-love, on the other hand, has Happi
ness alone in contemplation. Happiness is a come-
quence of the full recognition of the law of duty, and
thus it is that the Principle of Reflection and the

66 Bishop Butler.

Principle of Self-love coincide. Although it is not
specifically stated, it yet flows from the nature of the
Principle of Reflection and the functions assigned to
it, that the happiness of duty-doing is not considered
to be the motive-power which ought to influence a
moral agent, if indeed the happiness can be said to
enter into the moral sphere at all in the strict and
stoical sense. The contradiction, however, is not yet
reconciled.

Notwithstanding the inconsistencies and inade
quacies of statement which we have pointed out, there
can be no doubt that in Butler's mind ' The Principle
of Reflection' was the supreme moral faculty, the
director and superintendent of all human action,
always present and always asserting its presence. It
is impossible to say, however, what ultimate definition
Butler would have given of this principle, or how he
would have characterized it, in the presence of adverse
criticism. Probably he would have pointed to its
characterization of itself in daily and hourly action
within the breast of every man. That it is a ' par
ticular kind of reflection/ seems to be admitted ; and
from this we may infer that its mode of procedure
is a process, not an act. The first step is delibe
ration ; that is, the holding before the mental view
two or more differing, if not contradictory, acts, with
a view to the discovery of that act which, being right,
it behoves us to perform. Thus far we have to deal
with an act of ordinary intelligence, the distinctive
features of which appear only in the next step of the
process, which is an instantaneous discrimination of

Bishop Bntler. 67

the right, the moment it is compared with other pos
sible courses of conduct. As the first step is simply
a special application of the understanding, it follows
that we begin to learn what this special faculty or
'Principle' is only in the second step, when it is mani
festly a movement of Feeling. That by which we dis
criminate, then, must be a Moral Feeling or Sense.

How does this Feeling discriminate ? According to
Butler, by approving one thing and disapproving
another. This appears from his own explicit state
ments, as well as from the fact that he constantly desig
nates the ' Principle of Reflection' as the Principle
of 'Reflex-Approbation.' Now, to discriminate by
approving is to discriminate by an affection of feeling
which is pleasurable ; from which it follows that sub
jective happiness is, after all, the end of conduct, and
the criterion of morality. If we bear in mind the
range and function which Butler claims for Self-Love,
it will be apparent that he cannot escape from the
above interpretation of his position.

He himself would probably, however, resile from the
conclusion to which we have brought him, and take
refuge in the Authority of Conscience or the Prin
ciple of Reflection. The thing which is discriminated
is, he might say, the Authoritative character of one
act as compared with others ; — this feeling of Autho
rity being in itself neither pleasurable nor painful, but
simply a new thing, a new inner sensation, to which
the name Authority is attached. But in the course of
his argument to show that the Principle of Reflection
holds supremacy over man's nature, he illustrates it

68 Bishop Butler.

by the principle of Self-Love, which also has, accord
ing to him, a claim to supremacy, by virtue of the
fact that the pleasure it yields is of a superior kind to
that of the ' propensions/ etc. In this superiority of
kind lies its superiority of rightful power ; in other
words, its inner authority. From this we are led to
perceive that the supremacy of Conscience is deter
mined by its superiority in nature and kind to other
principles of action, and that on this superiority rests
its claim to supreme authority. But, setting aside the
element of intellect in this ' Principle of Reflection/ I
am at a loss to know how I can become aware of
its superiority of kind as one of many feelings, save
by a finer quality of sensation being yielded by it.
Thus, whatever may be said of duty and authority,
the Principle of Eeflection, so far as it discriminates
or discerns, finally resolves itself into understanding
plus a feeling of pleasure or pain ; and thus we are
again brought round to the conclusion that happiness
is the criterion of rightness.

Having found our criterion and our discerning Feel-
ing, we have the means of discriminating the Right
in each particular case. But having found them, we
next ask, ' Why should a man conform to the right V
In the preceding exposition we have found Butler's
answer to this question to be, that 'Conscience not only
shows us the way, but carries its authority with it, or,
we might rather say, in it.' Here the chief defect of
Butler is the acceptance of such an inner sentiment
without any attempt to analyse it, or to trace out its
various manifestations with a view to ascertain its

Bishop Butler. 69

real character. Whether this authority proceeds from
the fact of the superiority in kind of that principle
of action which has been already discerned in the
second step of the conscience-process to be the right
principle, and therefore may be resolved into the
obligation or authority which is inherent in admitted
ends as such (an authority which Butler elsewhere
maintains), or arises in consciousness close in the rear
of the discernment of the right, or concurrently with
it ; or whether, in fine, it leaps out of the heart of the
perception of Tightness as part of the act of moral
perception, saying in a voice of thunder, ' Do this/-
does not appear. We are merely told that it is 'a
constituent part of Keflex-approbation.' We are con
sequently at a loss to know how to argue the ques
tion with our author, unless we were to take up for
criticism the current intuitive doctrine of ' Conscience-
authority,' and identify his opinion with it, — a course
of procedure which would scarcely be justifiable. We
must therefore content ourselves with the above ex
position of Butler's special errors of confusion on this
the most important of ethical questions. Where we
expected to find strength we have found weakness-
strength of asseveration doubtless, but a slurring over
of difficulties and an inadequate psychological analysis.
Nor do we obtain more satisfaction when we ques
tion our author on the ' Supreme Good/ The Supreme
Good vanishes into conformity with the dictates of
' cool Self-love and Conscience/ and its unity is thus
broken, while virtue is identified (as is too common in
ethical writings), with virtuous sentiments at one time,

yo Bishop Butler.

virtuous conduct or conduct in harmony with nature
in the stoical sense at another, and with conscience
itself at a third. So far is this negligence carried,
that we find such loose expressions as the following :
—Obligation is ' implied in the very idea of Virtue,
in the very idea of Reflex-approbation/ In what
sense obligation is contained in the idea of Virtue
apart from Reflex-approbation or Conscience is not
explained, and we are thus compelled to identify
conscience and the object of its contemplation, virtue.
In truth we find, the more closely we look into
Butler's theory, that there is in it a threefold system
of parallel and concurrent ends and obligations. Our
criticism on the position in the human economy whicli
he assigns to Self-Love, as a regulative and authori
tative principle, justifies this conclusion when taken
in connexion with his theory of Virtue. For he
informs us that man's nature is 'plainly adapted'
to virtue, and that we are bound to harmonize our
actions with nature if we would fulfil the end of our
economy, — the obligation to the pursuit of this end
lying in the admitted fact that it is an end. And
alongside of both these moral theories we have an
overriding and dominant system, of which the lead
ing characteristic is a separate Faculty or Principle of
Reflection, at once discriminating, authoritative, and
the supreme end in itself.

Passing from the questions of ends, of criterion,
and of obligation to the question of Conscience, as a
separate faculty, we find that little need be said. In

Bishop Butler. 7 i

our author this vague and indefinite original power is,
if we look closely, found to be composed of four
elements, undistinguished the one from the other, and
to be by no means that simple ultimate power which
his followers usually assume, supported in this as
sumption by their master's example. It reflects, it
discriminates, it approves, it commands. Which of
these functions truly exhibits to our view the separate
moral faculty ?

In concluding this brief critical survey of Butler's
argument, we are struck by the fact that he owed
more to Shaftesbury and Aristotle than to any other
philosopher. To Shaftesbury he owes, among other
things, the idea of an inner constitution and har
monious end, while a reminiscence of Aristotle runs
through his whole conceptions. His 'principles of
action ' are, generally speaking, the non-rational im
pulses and affections of Aristotle ; and where Aristotle
placed controlling reason actively seeking a mean in
all passions of the soul, Butler placed the Principle of
Reflection— an internal sense discharging the function
of reason and also of a conscience. Even this posi
tion, however, he does not steadily and consistently
adhere to ; and the consequence is, that, after the most
careful study, we close his book with the feeling that
a powerful thinker has taken a firm grasp of moral
truths, but that by contenting himself with the com
plex where he should have sought the simple, and
by assuming where it was necessary to prove, he has
failed to give forth a system which can stand the test
of a close analysis.

7 2 David Hume.

TRANSITION TO BENTHAM.
DAVID HUME (DIED 1776).

WERE we writing a history of moral speculation,
we should here have to trace the influence of Locke,
Leibnitz, and Wolf on the ethical thought of Europe.
Our purpose, however, is much more limited. Having
traced the rapid development of the Intuitional
theory in reaction against the extreme sensationalism
and cynical utilitarianism of Hobbes, we now propose
to turn our attention to the revival of his doctrines
in a new and much modified form by Bentham, and his
successors in our own clay, Mr. Mill and Mr. Bain.
Intuitionalism continued to be well represented and
ably taught by Adam Smith, Eeid, Stewart, Brown
(under certain reservations), and others; while Hartley,
Tucker, and Paley stood forth as the most prominent
exponents of the opposite school. The most interesting
of the brilliant thinkers who crowded the latter half
of the eighteenth century was David Hume. "While
giving the weight of his influence to utilitarianism, he
more than any other illustrates the inroad which the
writers whose labours we have reviewed had made
on the Hobbistic doctrine. An anti-Hobbist he cer
tainly is, and yet we are so far from classing him
with Intuitionalists, that we find in him the philo
sophic groundwork of Benthamism. Although we do

David Hume. 73

not propose to give a full exposition of his theory, a
few words will help to indicate the historical connexion
in this country between the eighteenth and the nine
teenth century.

Notwithstanding the lucidity of David Hume's
style, it is not always at once obvious how far his
argument is intended to carry his readers, or what are
the distinctive features of his theory. This arises,
perhaps, from the attitude of analytic inquirer rather
than of synthetic system-builder which he assumes.
In ethics, this peculiarity of Hume's reasoning is, as
might be expected from the complex nature of the
subject, especially conspicuous. The following may
be accepted as an accurate though brief statement of
the conclusions to which he came, it being understood
that his mode of expression is translated into more
modem phraseology.

1. The Criterion of Morality Hume finds to be, so
far as transitive or social acts are concerned, Utility ;
Utility, however, being only a means towards an end,
and that end being the happiness and interests of
society. The happiness and interests of society,
accordingly, are the end and criterion of the Eight
in all social acts. Similarly, those acts which are not
social have for their end and criterion the happiness
and interests of the individual.

2. The foundation of what may be distinctively
called the 'Morality' of acts, viz., their approvableness,
or the reverse, is, (a.) in the case of acts social, the

74 David Hume.

Sentiment of Humanity or Benevolence, which is the
source of the pleasure we feel when acts are seen to
attain the useful end. Sometimes it is merely the
agreeable feeling which we have on seeing them in
operation. But here Hume is manifestly loose in his
analysis; for all cases of the 'agreeable' in the matter
of transitive acts are resolvable into the satisfaction
of the sentiment of Humanity. For example, the
qualities of Decency, Cleanliness, Manner, Manners,
Wit, which are referred to by Hume, are all of
manifest objective utility, (b.) In the case of acts
not social, the foundation of approvableness is the
agreeableness of them to the person who performs
them, and, consequently, to others who behold them
in him. This presumes, of course, the doctrine of sym
pathy as essential to moral judgments, but he does
not give the doctrine any prominence, or appear to
see its full importance, except in one passage, where
he says, — The 'immediate sensation [of the social
qualities] to the person possessed of them is agree
able : others enter into the same humour, and catch
the sentiment by a contagion or natural sympathy ;
and as we cannot forbear loving whatever pleases,
a kindly emotion arises towards the person who
communicates so much satisfaction/1 Those people
are 'virtuous' and 'meritorious' who practise quali
ties which thus stir up in us agreeable feelings when
we contemplate them and their operation. [The
principal intransitive qualities cited as meritorious are

1 Sect. vii. ' Of Qualities immediately agreeable to ourselves.'

David Hume. 7 5

Tranquillity, Greatness of Mind, Courage, Delicacy
of Taste.]

3. The ground of Obligation to do the act which
contributes to the end— the happiness of society or
the interests and happiness of the individual agent, as
the case may be — is this, that all men, if they will only
see it, will 'find their account' in so acting. The
virtuous is a pleasant, attractive, and much-rewarding
mental condition ; and it seems very absurd not to
maintain oneself constantly in it. If men decline
to do so, they will suffer from the disapprobation of
their fellow-men, and from want of peace in them
selves.

4. Reason instructs in the tendency of acts, and its
operation is especially needful in all questions of
Justice. When these are reduced to their simple
elements, their relation to the happiness of society
will be seen, and the Sentiment of Humanity will
then affix to them the character of approvable or
disapproval:^. He maintains that presumed Justice
only may be, whereas Benevolence must be always,
useful to society ; and that it is therefore difficult to
say when an act is to be approved as Just.

Hume's position may be thus briefly summed up :—
'Morality is determined by Sentiment;' and 'Virtue'
is ' whatever mental action or quality gives to a spec
tator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.' The
next question in morals is, 'What actions have this
influence on the spectator's sentiment ? ' And the
answer is, ' Those which produce happiness and pro-

7 6 David Hume.

mote the interests of society/ The third question —
the question of a moral faculty — is answered dubiously
thus : 'The final sentence' as to the 'amiable or odious
probably depends on some internal sense or feeling/

Were we to endeavour to characterize Hume's ethics
in their relation to his predecessors, we should say
that it was an eclectic Epicureanism, modified by
the 'Moral- Sense' doctrines of Hutcheson. Bentham
specially repudiated all of Hume which seemed to
point to the theory of a Moral Faculty, but he un
questionably owed to him the form of his own utili
tarianism ; while to the thoroughgoing system of
Paley1 he was indebted for the extension of the
utilitarian ends and sanctions beyond the present
existence.

1 Died 1805. His doctrines are considered in the Notes on Professor
Bain.

Jeremy Benthani. 77

JEREMY BENTHAM.

BOEN 1748 ; DIED 1832.

IN our opinion the distinctive characteristic of
Jeremy Bentham's moral theory is the relation in
which it stands to his systematic psychology. It is to
the underlying scheme of the human mind, and to the
implicit reference which is constantly made to it, that
we owe the favourable contrast in which Benthamism
stands to the theory of Hobbes. Had this contrast
been more clearly seen, the merits of the author would
have been more generously admitted by those whose
opposition has been too often stimulated by party
feeling.

Bentham held that Utility was the standard of
the Right in conduct, personal and political. By the
Utility of an act he meant its tendency to produce
Happiness (pleasure, or rather the aggregate of plea
sures) or to prevent Unhappiness (pain). This is
nowhere more clearly and succinctly expressed than
in the Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, where he says,—

' Nature has placed mankind under the government
of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for
them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well
as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand,
the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the

78 Jeremy Bentham.

chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne.
They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all \ve
think ; every effort we can make to throw off our
subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm
it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their em
pire, but in reality he will remain subject to it all
the while. The principle of utility recognises this
subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that
system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of
felicity by the hands of reason and of law/

The degrading connotations which have gathered
round the word Utility must be stripped off if we are
to understand Bentham and his system, and the term
must be employed in the sense which he attached to
it. The same caution has to be given with reference
to the word Interest. By the ' interest' of an indi
vidual or a community, Bentham meant the ' happi
ness' of an individual or community ; nor did he
restrict the application of the term 'happiness' to
those lower pleasures which in vulgar acceptation are
identified with ' utilities' and 'interests.'

In estimating Bentham 's moral teaching, it is further
necessary to bear in mind that, while of all thinkers
it may be truly said that their character and the cir
cumstances of their lives colour, if they do not deter
mine, their thought, this may be said in a peculiar
sense of those thinkers who begin and end with the
practical, and who value their analysis only in so far
as it is visibly fraught with beneficial consequences to
society. Starting, as Bentham did, with a feeling of

Jeremy Bentham. 79

moral disgust at legal forms and fictions, stimulated
on his career of speculation by a perception of the
injustice which characterized, in his opinion, much of
the administration of law, and by the departure, as it
seemed to him, from all principle in the administra
tion of affairs, unless a regard for the interests of
the governing classes might be called such, his work
of aggression would have been fragmentary, declama
tory, and inconsistent with itself, had he not sought
and found some distinctive and unvarying standard
by which to test and harmonize his speculations,—
some steady light to guide him through the per
plexities of ethical and political discussion. That he
was deeply sensible of this himself, and that to this
we owe the purely ethical part of his writings, appears
from the fact that the Introduction to the Principles
of Morals and Legislation was originally printed
under a different title and withheld from publication1
partly in consequence of the metaphysical difficulties
in which he found himself involved. Continuing,
however, to pursue his legal and political studies, he
found that in every one of his works the principles
exhibited in the Introduction ' had been found so
necessary, that either to transcribe them piecemeal or
to exhibit them somewhere where they could be re
ferred to in the lump was unavoidable.' Elsewhere
he says, that there is not ' a single proposition that I
have not found occasion to build upon in the penning
of some article or other of those provisions of detail of

1 Printed in 1780, published in 1789.

8o Jeremy Bent ham.

which a Body of Law, authoritative or unauthorita-
tive must be composed/

The ultimate standard of reference Bentharn, as we
have seen, found to be the pains and pleasures, the
happiness and unhappiness of man. This was after
wards formulated into the ' Greatest Happiness of
the Greatest Number/ and this again was at a later
period improved into ' The Greatest Happiness on the
Whole/ — a movement in Bentham's thought which
seems to have escaped the notice of the majority of
his disciples, but which was by no means without sig
nificance. He, however, never rested content, as the
majority of his followers have done, with the vague
phrase ' The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Num
ber/ On the contrary, he says that c it is in vain to
talk of the interest of the community without under
standing what is the interest of the individual. A
thing is said to promote the interest, or to be for the
interest, of an individual when it tends to add to the
sum-total of his pleasures, or, what comes to the same
thing, to diminish the sum-total of his pains. An
action, then, may be said to be conformable to the
principle of utility, or, for shortness' sake, to Utility
(meaning with respect to the community at large),
where the tendency it has to augment the happiness of
the community is greater than any it has to diminish it/

Having thus rested the principle of Utility on the
two pillars, pleasures and pains, and having affirmed
the 'impossibility of understanding the interest of the
Public Body without first understanding the interest

Jeremy Dentham. 8 1

of the individual bodies composing it/ he found it
necessary, with a view to give completeness to his
Ethical system, to inquire into the nature of the in
dividual man.

In entering upon this analysis, he started from the
point of view that morals and legislation had to do
with psychological pathology alone, and that man
must be regarded solely as a bundle of pleasures and
pains, actual or possible. The results of his analysis
he gives in a Table of the ' Springs of Action/ showing
the several species of pleasures and pains of which
man's nature is susceptible, together with the several
species of interests, desires, and motives respectively
corresponding to them. This table is followed by
explanatory notes and observations, and must always
be read in connexion with his statements of moral
doctrine. It exhibits fourteen classes of Pleasures,
with their corresponding pains, interests, and motives
—a motive being a desire of securing some pleasure
or interest, or of avoiding some pain. To enter into
these in detail is not necessary to our present purpose.
It will suffice, omitting what is meanwhile superfluous,
to enumerate them. They are Pleasures and Pains of
the Palate, with its corresponding interest of the palate ;
Pleasures and Pains of the sexual appetite, with its
corresponding sexual interest ; Pleasures and Pains of
the Sense, generally or collectively considered, with
the corresponding sensual interest ; Pleasures and
Pains of Possession and Privation, with the correspond
ing interest of the purse ; Pleasures and Pains of

F

82 Jeremy Bentham.

Power, with its corresponding interest of the sceptre ;
Pleasures and Pains of Curiosity, with its correspond
ing interest of the spying-glass ; Pleasures and Pains
of Amity, that is to say, derivable from the Good- will
or Ill-will of others towards self, with the correspond
ing interest of the closet ; Pleasures and Pains of the
Moral or Popular Sanction (Eeputation), with its cor
responding interest of the trumpet ; Pleasures and
Pains of the Eeligious Sanction (that is to say, of
religion, or the love and fear of God), with its cor
responding interest of the altar ; Pleasures and Pains
of Sympathy (that is to say, of Benevolence or Good
will), with its corresponding interest of the heart ;
Pleasures and Pains of Antipathy (that is to say, of
malevolence or ill-will), with its corresponding inter
est of the gall-bladder ; Pains of Labour, with its
corresponding interest of the pillow ; Pains of Death,
and bodily pains in general, with the corresponding
interest of self-preservation ; Pleasures and Pains of
the self-regarding class, collectively considered, and
the corresponding self -regarding Interest.

To show that this analysis is inadequate, that it
exhibits too much as well as too little, that the cross-
divisions are numerous, and that consequently, as a
scheme of ethical psychology, it will not bear the
slightest investigation, would be easy, were it within
the scope of our present argument. The scheme, such
as it is, however, merits our gratitude, and served
Bentham's purpose. Having thus settled to his own
satisfaction the various pleasurable and painful ends,

Jeremy Bent ham. 83

and having defined a motive to be the desire of having
or avoiding one or other of these ends, he thereby
defined utility as a principle of conduct for the indi
vidual, and, by consequence, for states.

Pleasures, then, constituting the utilities, and Pains
the irmtilities, of human life, it behoves man to
seek the former and avoid the latter, if he would do
right. What ! we feel constrained to ask, when read
ing such a simple summary of moral duty, Can it
ever be right to court the pleasures of malevolence
and antipathy, or to indulge, without stint, in the
pleasures of the senses, or of power, or of the closet, or
of the trumpet ? Into the multitude of pleasures and
pains of which man is susceptible, does no supreme
controlling power enter ? Sum up, says Bentham,
the pleasures or utilities that flow from any act, and
put them on one side of your moral ledger, and on the
other make an equally careful summation of the pains
or inutilities, strike the balance, and if it be on the
side of Pleasure, it will give the good tendency of the
act upon the whole, and thereby constitute it right ;
if on the side of Pain, it will give the bad tendency
of it on the whole, arid thereby constitute it wrong.
Right and Wrong, Virtue and Vice, accordingly, be
come questions of measure and quantity. In perfect
consistency with this doctrine, Bentham holds that
there can be no such thing as good or bad motives,
inasmuch, wre suppose, as every possible motive which
can actuate a man must be a desire for some admitted
utility which is in itself good.

84 Jeremy Bentham.

Now, so far as personal morality is concerned, that
is to say, those states and acts which confine them
selves to the individual alone, we are perfectly entitled
to maintain that there can be, according to the above
theory, neither good nor bad, approvable nor censur
able, virtue nor vice, in any moral sense. A man
may be careless or stupid, and cast up the columns of
his conduct-ledger wrong ; or he may be foolish, un
wise, intellectually perverse : but nothing more and
nothing worse.

This conclusion as regards Bentham's system of
personal ethics is further justified by the purely
external character of his moral Sanctions or Obliga
tions ; nor do we suppose it is one which any of his
disciples would deny, except those who have acquired
a habit of reading into Bentham what they have found
elsewhere.

The cause of truth, however, is never advanced
by straining the weak points of any system of
thought, least of all ought there to be a disposition to
do this in the case of an antagonist whose theoretical
weaknesses arise from a too exclusive regard to the
strengthening of his means of attack and defence
on the side where his theory combated what seemed
to him to be existing injustice, and promoted the
cause of humanity. A more congenial task is to seek
for indications, if any such can be found, of a truer
and higher view of right and wrong in human con
duct than can be extracted from the above summary.

Jeremy Bentham. 85

Nor are sucli indications altogether wanting, although
so introduced and so conceived as not substantially
to affect the theoretical development of the author's
doctrine of personal morality. Such indications may
be found, for example, in his observations on ' Good
and Bad,' etc., where he affirms each Pleasure to be
a good in itself ; that is, ' on the supposition that
it is not preventive [not of a quantity of pleasure
or pleasures, but] of a more than equivalent plea
sure;' and again, in the Principles of Morals and
Legislation, where, in reply to objections, he says,
— ' There are interests [pleasures or happinesses] of
different orders, and different interests are in certain
circumstances incompatible. Virtue is the sacrifice
of a smaller to a greater interest/ The import
ant ethico-psychological truths to which such pas
sages point, although unrecognised in a systematic
way by Bentham, manifestly influenced his thought ;
and, to an extent greater than he imagined, formed
the basis of his own moral judgments, supplying un
consciously the defects of his system. When penning
these qualifications of his theory, he, in point of fact,
stood on the border-ground which separates the Ben
thamite system of objective utilitarianism from the
higher doctrine of subjective eudoemomsm ; nay, he
had almost obtained a glimpse of a system of eudse-
monism which restored to man a Moral Sense, while
finding in its larger interpretation of ethical conscious
ness a fitting place for quantitative or utilitarian
ethics. Unfortunately, such glimpses as lie seems

86 Jeremy Bent ham.

occasionally to have obtained of the moral nature of
the individual man, and of the true characteristics of
the moral and virtuous act, were quickly lost sight of.
Nor could anything else have been expected. That
he should quickly pass from the consideration of the
* interest of the individual/ to which we have referred
above, and which would have confined him for a time
within the sphere of subjective ethics, arose from the
fact that the work he had to do was in the field of
political morality. Accordingly, he hurried on to the
consideration of man as a constituent member of a
body politic, and of his duties to the community as
a subject or as a ruler, contemplating self-referent
duties only in so far as they immediately or mediately
affected the community at large.

It is in pursuit of this object that, when surveying
the various pleasures of which man was susceptible,
and each of which he might rightly indulge in its
turn, it was necessary to find some limiting or con
trolling principle by which each man, as a member of
society, must regulate his conduct ; and further, to find
certain sanctions, that is to say, obligatory or binding
pleasures and pains wherewith to ratify and enforce
the recognition of the principle. If man's acts were
not to be regulated by ever-varying caprice, if moral
distinctions were not to cease, if society was not to be
a chaos of conflicting motives and ends all equally
right and good, some supreme and regulative pleasur
able end had to be found to which all others should
subordinate themselves. That supreme end, that

Jeremy Bentham. 87

regulative standard, was the principle of Utility par
excellence, the Utility of the Community as a whole
dominating over all minor utilities, — the general
as opposed to the particular well-being. Or, it may
be technically put thus : if any man desires to gratify
the interests of the senses, the spying-glass, the
sceptre, or the altar, he must consider to what extent
such gratification would affect the general quantity of
pleasure in the State, and abstain if the balance be
unfavourable. Thus the extra-regarding pleasures
constitute a kind of outside conscience, and restrain
or stimulate the self-regarding pleasures according to
the circumstances of each case.

The first consequence which follows from this posi
tion is, that inasmuch as the act of each individual is
to be estimated according to the quantity of pleasure
or pleasures which it produces or tends to produce,
it must often happen that many will suffer pains from
an act which the summation of the two sides of the
moral-ledger shows to be productive of pleasure to
a still larger number, that is, to be productive of a
larger mass of pleasures, and to be therefore right.
Hence the inevitable necessity early imposed on Ben
tham and his disciples, of explaining Utility by the
phrase, 'The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest
Number/ a formula which was afterwards interpreted
to mean ' The Greatest Happiness on the whole/

Having thus fixed the ultimate end of individual
and corporate action, and found the Utility which
controlled other Utilities and gave them their moral

88 Jeremy Bentham.

character, the next question which presented itself
for answer was, ' Why should a man conform to this
Greatest-Happiness end V To the reply, that so to con
form was itself a pleasure, being in fact the pleasure
of Good-will, already included in the classification of
springs of action, the rejoinder might fairly be, that
the individual, having made his moral summation,
found his happiness-account in another course of
conduct ; in short, in the gratification of the self-
regarding pleasures. Nor, on utilitarian ground, is it
possible to overthrow this position, except by showing
the recalcitrant, that if he framed his conduct in
accordance with the Greatest-Happiness standard, he
would be thereby simply taking the surest, though
certainly a circuitous, way of securing for himself the
greatest possible amount of selfish personal pleasures
and the greatest possible amount of freedom from
selfish personal pains. Thus altruism would become
a mediate egoism. And this is substantially what
Bentham tries to show, either explicitly or by impli
cation, passim. He does so explicitly, when he enu
merates the pleasures and pains which go to support
and hedge round the supremacy of the Greatest-
Happiness standard. These are his moral sanctions,
and are classified as physical, political, moral, and
religious. We do not mean to say that Bentham
ever fairly and fully faces the question, ' Why should
a man conform to the Greatest-Happiness standard?'
but as our object is to state succinctly the most con
sistent and favourable theory of Benthamite utili
tarianism, and as the only sanctions or binding forces

Jeremy Bentham. 89

of pain and pleasure which Bentham mentions are
those just enumerated, we presume that they would
be used, in case of polemical need, as furnishing the
best utilitarian answer to the question, ' Why is a
man to do right?'

The sanctions above referred to are not specially
introduced by Bentham as the binding forces naturally
operating to cause men to conform to the Greatest-
Happiness end, but they are exhibited and expounded
as the sanctions of utilitarianism generally, and it
accordingly follows that they are operative in oblig
ing individuals to a submission of their wills to
the fundamental or ultimate principle of all right
human conduct. On this presumption, then, we turn
to look at these sanctions more closely, and find that
if a man does not do right, he may or will suffer—
(1.) Physical pains; that is, such material calamities as
befal a man in the order of nature, in consequence of
his own imprudence : (2.) Political pains ; that is,
such pains as may be inflicted on him by a judge :
(3.) Moral pains ; that is, such pains as may visit
him, because not warded off by the consideration
which other people with whom 'he has intercourse
have for his character : (4.) Eeligious pains ; that is,
such pains as may visit him here or hereafter, in con
sequence of the wrath of God. Now a careful consi
deration of the aims and tendency of Bentham's
writings will satisfy any man that, in the above
theory of obligation, he did not do justice to himself,
still less to the utilitarian ethics. Any attempt, how -
ever, to extract out of the materials which lie has

90 Jeremy Bentham.

furnished a more adequate and more acceptable theory
of moral ends and obligations, would be to make him
see what the persistency and pertinacity of the atti
tude which he took up (in consequence of his practical
aims) prevented his seeing ; it would be, in short,
to present to the reader a natural development of
Benthamism instead of Benthamism proper. We
must note, therefore, that these sanctions of the
Right are purely material and external — penal in
the ordinary acceptation of this word. Were any
of the numerous disciples, who have unconsciously
imported something of themselves into their master's
doctrine, to doubt this, the following extract from
the Principles of Morals and Legislation would
settle the doubt :—

* Of these four sanctions, the physical is altogether,
we may observe, the groundwork of the political and
moral : so is it also of the Religious, in as far as the
latter bears relation to the present life. It is included
in each of those other three. This may operate in any
case (that is, any of the pains or pleasures belonging
to it may operate) independently of them ; none of
them can operate but by means of this. In a word,
the powers of nature may operate of themselves ; but
neither the magistrate, nor men at large, can operate ;
nor is God, in the case in question, supposed to ope
rate, but through the powers of nature/ See also his
Logical Arrangements.

It is scarcely necessary to add, that by the same
means corresponding pleasures induce men to prefer
the Right.

Jeremy Bentkam. 9 1

There can be no doubt that, so far as personal
morality is concerned, Benthamism puts no check
on the indulgence of the various pleasures and inter
ests, beyond those which the idiosyncracies and cir
cumstances and calculations of individuals might of
themselves put, until the gratification of them is found
to hurt the general utility. Further, that its govern
ing principle has no inherent value or attraction, but
derives its supremacy from the general perception of
common interests, and the pains which the general
opinion inflicts on the purely self-regarding citizen;
that, consequently, the only obligation to do the
Right is to be found in those external sanctions of
pain and pleasure which are dependent on the action
of others, and which affect for better or worse the
numerous susceptibilities of the human constitution,
as they have been already detailed by him in his
pathological psychology. While these conclusions re
garding the system are correct, if the system be judged
from the works of the author, we must at the same
time guard the reader against confounding this theory
of Use with the theory of mere pleasure and pain in
any Cyrenaic sense. Benthamism is not hedonism.
It is a system of calculation of quantities, in which, it
is true, all the quantitative elements are originally of
the same value, but, unlike Hobbism, it embraces
Good-will (Amity) and Love of Reputation, thereby
connecting us sympathetically with our fellow- men.

The defects of the theory, as a theory of ends and
obligations, we have to some extent indicated in the
course of our exposition, and others it would be

92 Jeremy Bentham.

superfluous in these days to dwell upon. The car
dinal objections to the system, quite apart from its
utter inadequacy as an analysis of the moral nature
of man, — a subject which might furnish a topic for
many chapters of disquisition, — may be brought into
view in a comparatively limited space.

As a theory of Ends, it is based on an inaccurate
psychology, inasmuch as it does not allow the Quali
tative to enter into the argument at all, much less
as a supreme regulative element. The higher and
lower disappear, and all morality is merged in pru
dence. This radical defect we have already noticed
in the course of our exposition.

The system makes no distinction, except inciden
tally, between Subjective or Intransitive, and Objec
tive or Transitive acts, and while fixing a criterion for
the latter, leaves the former without protection. In
acts of the former class, accordingly, a moral agent is
justified in acting in accordance with his intellectual
summation alone, should he choose to stand by it
and to aver that the interests of sense are more to
him than all others aggregated. Nay, even in acts
Transitive, the criterion furnished is quite illusory,
because the kind of happiness which an individual
might choose to promote in the community, under a
bondjlde desire to comply with the criterion, may be
based on inadequate, low, arid erroneous conceptions.
His desire to distribute happiness will not enable him
to distribute anything better than his own conception
of what is best, which conception rests, and must rest

Jeremy Bentham. 93

on his own experiences of felicity alone, and his own
conclusions about it, which, as appears from what we
have said as to subjective acts, may be low and erro
neous. We cannot venture safely to enter on the
question of the distribution of happiness until we
have settled the question of individual happiness for
ourselves ; that is to say, until we have formed a con
ception of human life and destiny.

If the happiness to be distributed has not this fore
gone subjective basis, it must rest on the will of the
community which we wish to benefit ; but inasmuch
as this means the opinion, for the time being, of the
majority, and inasmuch as each member of the majo
rity may have made an erroneous quantitative sum
mation, and the minority may after all be right, it
follows that there is no fixed basis for the right tran
sitive act which can approve itself to any rational
intelligence.

Even supposing that each man were gifted with
supreme prudence, and could determine for himself
that quantitative aggregation of pleasures which was
greatest, therefore best, and therefore for himself, as
man, the right and moral end, yet Good-will and sym
pathy, although they would, according to the Ben
thamite scheme, enter into this aggregation, could not
rightly do so in any dominant or prevailing way.
When, therefore, required to conform in his transi
tive acts to the greatest happiness of the greatest
number, he would be morally justified in declining to
do so, on the ground that it interfered with his happi
ness on the whole, until he was convinced that his

94 Jeremy Bentham.

own personal aggregate pleasures would be extended
or intensified by so acting ; in other words, that the
twelve classes of interests, which have nothing to do
with the interest of Amity or the love of Reputation,
would gain by the transaction more than they lost.

If lie were not convinced, and yet were com
pelled to obey laws which were based on the common
interests, he might justly complain of injustice, and
society itself would be guilty of immorality in his
special case. If he were convinced, the right transi
tive acting of to-day might become wrong transitive
acting to-morrow, and meanwhile the delicate quanti
tative balance be disturbed by a keener relish for some
of the self- regarding interests of Sense, or of Power,
or what not. The Prudence of to-day would be the
Imprudence of to-morrow. Even should he remain in
the same mind and conviction, the gratification of the
benevolent and social interests, although yielding a
certain limited reward in themselves, would continue
to be practised with a view to the reversion of the
twelve self-regarding interests — would be, in short, an
indirect or mediate selfishness, under a delusive and
imposing name.

Further, the obligation so to act would rest solely
on the threats of his fellow-men. It could not rest
in himself, because the whole question with him has
been one of desirableness only, not of imperativeness.
Imperativeness can have no possible place in the
inner history of his deliberations. Nor could it rest
in the will of God, because, in so far as the will of
God is revealed in the order of His constitution, it is

Jeremy Bent ham. 95

revealed on the side of that which yields the greatest
quantity of desirable things on the whole. And to
the argument that, inasmuch as he does possess the
* interests ' of Amity and Reputation, he is ipso facto
under obligation to the Creator who implanted these
in his heart to gratify them, it would be a sufficient
answer to say that these were given to him merely to
help him to do those transitive acts which, in an in
direct way, might bring about the largest quantity of
pleasures on the whole, and to reconcile him to tem
porary sacrifices with a view to large returns.

Accordingly, even supposing him to be convinced,
there being no natural superiority in any of the forces
and corresponding interests within him, there would be
no inner sense of obligation or authority at all possible.
The feeling of obligation would grow up only as he
gradually realized the forces outside him prepared to
make him suffer in his ' interests' if he did not do cer
tain things ; that is to say, there would be only external
sanctions, and an external source of obligation. Nor
only so : these sanctions or obligations would be deriv
ative, not primary, by which I mean that the disap
probation of men would not act as an obligatory force
upon him, but only the consequences of that disappro
bation as these might touch his interests. The force
of disapprobation or evil reputation, in itself or in its
primary character, would doubtless operate to some
extent ; but as it is only one of fourteen separate
interests, its presence would scarcely be discernible.
In so far as it was discernible and operative to the
extent of more than one -fourteenth, it would indicate

g6 Jeremy Bent ham.

moral weakness in the individual who was so influ
enced, inasmuch as he allowed one or two quantita
tive elements to overbear so many others of equal
importance. The model moral man would, in fact,
display his virtue by giving this 'interest' a very
inferior force, just as the same man would exhibit his
virtue by giving twelve personal interests supremacy
over 'Amity' and 'Keputation' in the case of transi
tive acts, except in so far as they were productive
mediately of personal pleasures.

And in truth Benthamism, as we have seen, except
occasionally and inadvertently, recognises only such
external obligations to just and benevolent action as
we have referred to. The sum of the possible pains
to the twelve self-regarding 'interests' originating in
the formal or informal (written laws or custom-laws)
power of society : the penal and the externally penal
is the true and sole fount of obligation.

Hence, we are driven to the conclusion that in Sub
jective or Intransitive acts the words obligation, au
thority, conscience, are quite unmeaning, and are
simply the equivalents of desirableness, or (if looked
at from another point of view), exact calculation ;
while in Transitive acts (the just and benevolent, or
their opposites) obligation simply denotes possible
suffering at the hands of our fellow-men. Obligation,
in brief, has no concern with morality whatsoever, but
properly restricts itself to the sphere of legality.

Could the ' Greatest Happiness ' of others in itself
operate as a permanent external conscience or control
ling power, it might serve the purpose in the matter of

Jeremy Bent ham. 97

social acts, and bind communities together ; but from
the nature of the thing it cannot so operate. The
phrase has no meaning until we have settled the
individual's greatest happiness; and if that rests on
the Quantitative, the greatest happiness of man cannot
be morally enforced on the individual, because it finds
no inner authoritative response : it has only a legal
validity, and that always dubious and vacillating.

We should therefore admire the consistency of the
thorough-going utilitarians, who, unable to ignore the
fact of a Moral Sense, as Bentham did, find in it
and in what the 'vulgar' call Conscience, only a fic
titious entity, an image set up within us by imagi
nation of the social penal forces existing outside us.1

1 It is scarcely necessary to say that in estimating Bentham's system
we have excluded the Deontology from our view, accepting the repudia
tion of that work by the most competent of Bentham's followers. It is
legitimate, however, to refer to it as illustrating the doctrine. The fol
lowing quotation from vol. ii. p. 132, which may be found in Mr. Burton's
Introduction to Bentham's Works, will show that we are so far from mis
representing the true character and consequences of the Benthamite doc
trine as to have given a more favourable estimate of it than its professed
friends : — ' Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you,
unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did
so, and never will, while human nature is made of its present materials.
But they will desire to serve you when by so doing they can serve them
selves ; and the occasions on which they can serve themselves by serving
you are multitudinous.' See also p. 29 of the Introduction. Again, we
have the opinion of two distinguished followers of oar author (Col.
Thompson and Mr. Burton) that ' in nine cases out of ten' morality yields
greater happiness than immorality, although in rare cases it may be other
wise ; and, therefore, that those who do not choose « morality,' that is to
say, who do not proportion and quantify their lives, commit ' an error
and a folly,' and are 'blockheads.' That morality should be rested at all
on such a calculation is illustrative of the tenor and consequences of the
doctrine.

Q

98 Mr. Mill.

NEW UTILITARIANISM— MR. MILL.

BENTHAMISM is neither Hobbism nor New-utili
tarianism. It stands midway between them. Its
errors and defects, exaggerated in the Deontology,
have during the last forty years been undergoing a
quiet revision, which has at last resulted in a new
manifesto from the present leader of the school. The
inroads which were made on pure Hobbism in the
I'Zth and 18th centuries by Cudworth, Cumberland,
Clarke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and others of
less note, are conspicuously visible, as wTe have shown,
in the utilitarian essays of David Hume, and in the
ethical system of Bentham himself, notwithstanding
his repudiation of a 'Moral Sense' or 'Conscience/
and the contempt with which he treated all specula
tions proceeding on the assumption that these existed.
The influence of an advancing psychology, the widen
ing of human sympathies through the artistic and
historical literature of the past generation, and to some
extent the power of German thought conveyed to us,
though in a somewhat blurred form, by Coleridge and
Carlyle, have modified the conceptions of all save
the extreme positivist left.1 Mr. Mill, with his large

1 Were I here taking a historical survey of moral doctrine, I could not
omit to notice the modification of Paley's system contained in the Dis
course on Ethics, by William Smith, Barrister-at-Law, published in 1839.
In that discourse, which is characterized by much subtlety and eloquence,
the system of Paley is translated out of prose into poetry.

Mr. Mill. 99

receptive as well as active nature, accepts these
modifying influences, and in his Essay on Utili
tarianism endeavours to reconstruct Benthamism in
a spirit adapted to the needs of the time, and with
implicit reference to those richer and deeper elements
of life which are the inheritance of this generation, and
to which the epoch that gave birth to Bentham was
comparatively a stranger.

We have found that, according to Bentham, the
'interests' or 'pleasures' of each individual consti
tute the end of his activity, subject to only one con
trolling principle, ' The Greatest Happiness on the
whole/ In other words, Morality, so far as the in
dividual agent is concerned, is a question of mere
quantity, and might be determined by caprice or per
versity, provided always the agent had regard to that
greater mass of possible happiness outside him which
is his guide through the perplexities of moral action.
Quantitative happiness and an external standard con
stitute the two main characteristics of the Bentham
ite ethics. Many as are the merits of Bentham, we do
not think that it will be denied by any who derive
a knowledge of his argument from his own writ
ings, that, so far as personal morality is concerned,
Benthamism cannot consistently put any check on
the indulgence of the various pleasures and interests
which are enumerated by him, beyond that which the
idiosyncracies and circumstances and calculations of
the individual may from time to time impose, until
the gratification of these pleasures and interests hurts

ioo Mr. Mill.

the general utility. It must also be admitted that
his governing external principle has no inherent value
or attractiveness to the agent, but derives its valid
ity and supremacy from the perception of common
interests and the pains which the general opinion
inflicts on the purely self -regarding citizen ; that,
consequently, the only obligation to do the right is
to be found in those external sensations of pain and
pleasure proceeding from others, and affecting for
better or worse the numerous susceptibilities and
' interests' of the human constitution as these are
detailed by him in his pathological psychology.

Although we find in Mr. Mill such a departure
from the strict letter of Benthamism as we should
have expected from a man of wider intellectual and
imaginative sympathies than the master, we confess
that we do not perceive in him a deeper insight into
the moral constitution of man, or a clearer apprehen
sion of the scientific defects of the theory which he
expounds. The philanthropic zeal which characterized
the teacher belongs to his equally distinguished dis
ciple ; and this, while giving intensity, also gives
narrowness, to the moral vision. The thoughts and
desires of both being fixed exclusively on measures
tending to the amelioration of society, the equaliza
tion of felicities, and the relief of human misery, they
take hold of ethical questions only in their relation to
the polity of communities, and pay comparatively
little attention to the ethics of the individual. Had
they started with a more patient analysis of man's

Mr. Mill. 10 1

nature, and striven to read correctly the moral record
written on his heart, they could not, it seems to us,
have rested content with the meagre exposition which
utilitarianism gives of the ends of human action, of
the obligation to pursue those ends, of the doctrine of
justice, and of the characteristics of moral energizing.
Let us advert to these points in order.

Mr. Mill (and in this he merely heads a host of
modern followers) has been compelled to remedy the
most conspicuous defect of the Benthamite theory ;
and explicitly enunciates what Bentham only occa
sionally alludes to, without allowing for it in his
system, viz., the difference in the quality of pleasures
and pains, and the natural superiority of one pleasure
to another. He says :—

' It must be admitted, however, that Utilitarian
writers in general have placed the superiority of men
tal over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater perma
nency, safety, uncostliness, etc., of the former, — that
is, in their circumstantial advantages, rather than in
their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utili
tarians have fully proved their case ; but they might
have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher
ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compati
ble with the principle of utility to recognise the fact,
that some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and
more valuable than others. It would be absurd that,
while in estimating all other things quality is consid
ered as well as quantity, the estimation of pleasures
should be supposed to depend on quantity alone/

102 Mr. Mill.

Again, on page 17, he says :—

' According to the Greatest Happiness principle, the
ultimate end with reference to and for the sake of
which all other things are desirable (whether we are
considering our own good or that of other people), is
an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and
as rich as possible in enjoyments both in point of
quantity and quality/ . . . 'This being, according
to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action,
is necessarily also the standard of morality, which
may accordingly be defined the rules and precepts
for human conduct, by the observance of which
an existence such as has been described might be,
to the greatest extent possible, secured to all man
kind/ etc.

If this be a true exposition, as we believe it to be,
of utilitarian ends, according to the most enlightened
conception of these, then Utilitarianism is no longer
Benthamism. Quantity, exclusive of Quality, rules in
a system strictly utilitarian ; and any attempt to
define it as being of higher comprehension is a con
spicuous departure from the doctrines of the past.
Benthamism proper, even although occasionally allud
ing to the existence of higher interests, has no
means of obviating the corollary of its position,
viz., that two lower interests must overbalance one
higher interest ; and if (for some special reason) not
two, then three or four. Were there any doubt as
to the correctness of this estimate of the utilitarian
theory of ends, it would be removed by a considera-

Mr. Mill. 103

tion of the theory of obligation which supports it, and
which is drawn solely from the influence which
external sanctions exercise on the quantity of the
personal pleasures and pains of the moral agent. It
is further confirmed by the fact that Bentham, while
tabulating the springs of action, and endeavouring
elsewhere to lay a basis of ethical psychology for his
system of ends and sanctions, never takes up the most
important of all the psychological questions which
could have come within his range — the relative im
portance of interests, in any other than a quantitative
sense.

Accordingly, we gladly note this new modification
of the utilitarian theory of human life. At one
bound we are carried out of utilitarianism proper
into a species of ill-defined eudsemonism, which has
no small affinity to the principles of Shaftesbury
and Hutcheson. There is now an explicitly avowed
gradation among felicities, and the ' Greatest Happi
ness' theory is at once transformed into the ' Highest
Happiness' theory. Accordingly, for a moment we
imagine ourselves on the firm ground of a subjective
system of ethics, and begin to turn the pages hastily
in the hope of meeting with a new and improved
table of the Benthamite 'interests/ containing some
touchstone of quality, as well as a measure of quan
tity. Instead of this, we are introduced merely
to an inadequate re-statement of the doctrine of
David Hume, whose view of the eudsemonistic theory,
spite of its want of thorough systematizing, was the

104 Mr. Mill.

result of a much more thorough analysis than any
that has yet appeared on the utilitarian side. We
expect to find removed the confusion of the Bentham
ite doctrine, which, losing sight of individual mo
rality altogether, raises the standard of the ' Greatest
happiness of the greatest number/ without defining
wherein the true inner happiness of each individual of
that number consists, thereby leaving us to find a
motive or obligation to right action in considerations
purely external. Great, therefore, is our disappoint
ment to find that Hume's advanced position has been
here overlooked, and that Mr. Mill has omitted to take
advantage of his predecessor's distinctions to give fixed
ness, decision, and consistency to what is little more
than a reproduction of the more thoroughly excogi
tated eudsemonism of the Scottish sceptic.

The end as well as the criterion of the individual's
action is, according to Hume, the highest happiness of
the individual ; the end of all social acts is the happi
ness of society : and that which constitutes private and
public acts, moral or immoral, that is to say, appro vable
or censurable, is their conformity to these standards
respectively. No sooner has Mr. Mill seemed to seize
this distinction than it slips from his grasp, either in
consequence of a half- conscious surmise of the diffi
culties into which it might lead him when he should
enter on the question of ethical psychology, or from a
habit of mind acquired by a too exclusive converse
with only one of the two parallel lines of philosophical
thought which have marked the history of the world.

Mr. Mill. 105

He has just caught a view of the principle of sub
jective eudsemonism when he leaps aside ; and in the
illustrations which follow, and in which he com
bats some of the 'vulgar' prejudices against the
' Greatest Happiness' theory, he allows at one time
the individual happiness, at another the general hap
piness to dominate over his argument. The martyr
(to use his own illustration), even in renouncing
life and courting a painful death, foregoes happi
ness of many kinds, not for the sake of a personal
happiness which more than outweighs them all, but
for the sake of the happiness of his fellow-creatures.
Now, to our thinking, the martyr performed the
supreme act of Kightness ; but why ? Because he
loved his fellow-men so that he preferred to dare all
suffering in order to bear testimony to a principle of
human conduct fraught with happiness to man here
and hereafter. And further, because he loved the
Source of all Truth so, that to have been unfaithful
to the particular truth for which he daringly wit
nessed would have been a severance of his inner life
from its God, and a wilful exile of himself into a
region of spiritual death. The pang of such a separa
tion would have been deeper than all pains which
man could inflict : nay, perhaps the joy of conscious
union with God was so intense, that, like an ancient
Stoic, he could not admit that the inflictions of men
were even worthy of the name of pain. If this be a
true interpretation, so far as it goes, of the motives
which sustain the martyr, — namely, love to man and

io6 Mr. Mill.

love to God, — these motives are subjective. Psycho
logically speaking, he has sacrificed all present and
future felicities of this life in order to testify to
his supreme felicity in the sentiments of Good-will
to man and of Love of God. But Mr. Mill is shy of
any such conclusion : he looks outside the martyr's
sentiments only, and although finding his motive in the
general diffusion of happiness, he does not seem to see
that as a motive this must have been barren of all pos
sible fruit, except in so far as it stirred in the martyr's
own bosom the joy of a supreme act of Love. So shy,
indeed, is Mr. Mill of any other interpretation of the
martyr's act, that he (naively it seems to us) asks this
question, * Would it (the sacrifice) be made if he
thought that his renunciation of happiness for himself
would produce no fruit for any of his fellow-creatures,
but to make their lot like his, and place them also in
the condition of persons who have renounced happi
ness V The answer is, taking happiness in the sense
which Mr. Mill's argument gives it, ' Yes ; not only
for himself would he " count it all joy" thus to suffer,
but he would gladly call all men to a like glorious
destiny.' It is the treatment of such practical ques
tions as these which reveals the inherent weakness of
utilitarianism, and shows that, even in the hands of
one who readily admits variety and gradation in
human felicities, the doctrine is so interpenetrated
with error as to render but sorry help to those who
desire to look into the labyrinths and recesses of
man's moral nature.

Mr. Mill. 107

Lest by any chance the frequent employment of
the word ' happiness/ and its occasional use in a con
nexion in which it can only mean the happiness of
the individual agent, should mislead the reader, Mr.
Mill hastens to say that 'the only self-renunciation
which it (the utilitarian morality) applauds is de
votion to the happiness, or to some of the means of
happiness, of others ; either of mankind collectively,
or of individuals within the limits imposed by the
collective interests of mankind / and with still greater
emphasis he adds, 'I must again repeat what the
assailants of Utilitarianism seldom have the justice to
acknowledge, that the happiness which forms the
utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct is not
the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned'
(that is to say, of humanity). Thus after having
raised our hopes by distinguishing kinds of human
felicity, he fails to furnish us with any scientific,
graduated classification of these felicities, and quickly
losing sight of the subjective ground on which he had
for a moment taken his stand when enunciating the
qualitative element, he falls back into the old Ben
thamite position, and offers us the 'general utility'
as the standard of each and every act. Accordingly,
while we gladly, under Mr. Mill's guidance, translate
the phrase, 'the greatest happiness of the greatest
number/ into 'the highest happiness of the greatest
number/ we find that, even in his good company, we
still find ourselves furnished with only an external
standard of right, which can have only external

loS Mr. Mill.

sanctions. At best, and under the most favourable
interpretation which can be given of it, an objective
eudaemonism is all that is offered in place of the
Benthamite utilitarianism.

Nay, on close examination we find that the seeming
gift is, after all, only an empty and illusory phrase.
For, how can I ascertain the highest happiness of a
community, that is to say, of a number of men whom
accident or design has brought within each other's
influence, without first knowing wherein consists the
happiness of each man as man — not of this, that, or
the other particular individual, but of man. Having
ascertained this, either I as an agent am to be guided
by this ascertained happiness, which now becomes my
individual happiness and my duty, even in those
acts which affect others ; or (and this is the sole
alternative) I am to allow the happiness of the
majority to be the governing principle of my actions,
simply because the majority have concurred in think
ing this to be my duty.

That this is felt by Mr. Mill to be the alternative,
appears from his anxiety to take measures for creating
in man a habit of mind in harmony with the general
interest of the whole. This is to be done by so con
structing the State machinery 'that laws and social
arrangements should place the happiness or (as speak
ing practically it may be called) the interest of every
individual as nearly as possible in harmony with the
interest of the whole ;' and secondly, by deliberately
making use of education and opinion to establish in the

Mr. Mill. 109

mind of every individual an indissoluble association
between his own happiness and the good of the whole,
so that not only he may be unable to conceive the
possibility of happiness to himself consistently with
conduct opposed to the general good, but also that a
direct impulse to promote the general good may be
in every individual one of the habitual motives of
action. Now, cleverly as this doctrine is pro
pounded, it will be found, when narrowly inspected,
to be simply a re-statement of pure Benthamism,
and even to contain diluted Hobbism. The New-
utilitarianism, accordingly, notwithstanding its more
explicit enunciation of quality in felicities, thus
exposes its inability to find for itself any scientific
basis save that provided by Bentham, unless it moves
a step further, and wholly identifies itself with
subjective ethics. The action of the State, accord
ing to Mr. Mill, is to endow men with a kind
of factitious conscience ; and men will further be
taught that they are consulting their own interests
in yielding to the general opinion of the com
munity. They are, in point of fact, to be so in
structed that they will see that by giving away a
little now, they will secure a return of much at some
future day, through the operation of that very rule
which they are perhaps grudgingly obeying. In
short, to use the words of David Hume, if men will
conform their conduct to the principle of utility, they
will ' find their account in it.' This is surely to exag
gerate Benthamism ; for, when fairly estimated, what

no Mr. Mill.

is this but to say that the supreme standard of conduct
is a man's own individual felicity, excluding benevo
lence from among the number of his felicities, — a doc
trine which Bentham would never have sanctioned.
At best it places benevolence on a level with felicities
of other kinds, and thereby brings us back into the
region of pure quantitative ethics.

If Mr. Mill should reply (as from one passage we
infer that he would) that a portion, and a large por
tion, of the happiness of each moral agent arises out
of the gratification of the instinct of Good-will, and
that the gratification of this instinct, as well as of
other and lower felicities, is indissolubly bound up
with ' an impulse to promote the general good/ this
is simply to utter the identical proposition, that the
gratification of the instinct of Good-will is bound up
with the gratification of the instinct of Good- will :
and if we then go on to a,sk, ' Why should I, a free
agent, gratify my good- will more than my self-will ?'
the only additional inducement which can be offered
to me is, as we have already indicated, that by so
doing I secure a reversion of many other felicities
in addition to the present possession of the felicity of
benevolence. I thus, as it were, put out to usury the
capital of my benevolence, and, while enjoying the
luxury of possessing it, I, at the same time, secure a
large dividend out of the general stock of felicities.
It is because this is dimly felt to be in the long-run an
intellectual calculation — an arithmetical summation—
that utilitarians urge so vehemently the importance of

Mr. Mill. 1 1 1

forming the opinions and mental habits of the people ;
and it is because it is an intellectual calculation that
a man may be not only excused for working the
sum in a different way from Bentham or Mr. Mill,
but be held morally blameless if he chooses to direct
his life on the principle of pursuing only the self-re
garding pleasures ; unless it be maintained that that
man is blameworthy who declines to accept the pre
valent opinion of a community as Moral law.

If Mr. Mill, in evasion of the grosser consequences
of his doctrine, should fall back on the glimpse of sub
jective eudDemonism which he enjoyed when speaking
of the quality as opposed to the quantity of human
felicities, and should affirm that the moral agent above
referred to is blameworthy because he has refused to
follow after that felicity which is the supreme and
governing felicity of a normal nature, we rejoin by in
quiring, 'How is this ascertained?' Should Mr. Mill
meet us, as in one place he substantially does, with the
reply, ' By the common consent of all men who have
experienced this as well as the other felicities ;' we then
lead him to this unexpected conclusion, that inasmuch
as it is by a comparison of our inner feelings that we
detect certain qualities in the various felicities of which
we are susceptible, and inasmuch as that felicity, which
reasoning consciousness tells us is the highest, is also
the felicity which, ipso facto, and by Divine right, is
entitled to control all other felicities, and be the end
of human action, — we say, since these things are so,
the standard of Morality may be felicity, but it is the

i r 2 Mr. Mill.

felicity of Man — subjective felicity, subjective in rela
tion to the reason of Man as Man, and that in this sub
jective felicity each individual finds revealed his own
true Duty and Happiness. In this subjective eudae-
monism new-utilitarianism must end, or it must revert
to the pure Benthamite doctrine, which ultimately — if
not also explicitly as in the case of Hobbes — rests the
supreme and guiding principle of human conduct on
the general opinion or will of the community, and en
forces it by the pains and pleasures which the com
munity holds in its hand, supporting it by certain
additional reversionary advantages which arise from
obeying the current law, customary or written. Our
hope and our belief is, that it is in a subjective eudae-
monism that new-utilitarianism is destined to issue ;
and further, that in such a system of subjective eudse-
monism, based on a thorough analysis of emotional
states, and of their association with the sentiment of
Law and Duty, is to be found the reconciliation of
the long opposed schools of ethical thought.

Great as are the self-contradictions and confu
sions characteristic of this new-utilitarianism in its
treatment of the standard or criterion of rightness
in conduct, these defects are still more conspicuous
in its treatment of the sanctions of rightness. It has
been necessary, in following Mr. Mill's line of argu
ment, to associate this question of obligation to some
extent with that of the separate and prior question
of the criterion of rightness ; but the question itself

Mr. Mill. 113

is one which demands, and will repay, separate con
sideration. The question, ' Why is a man to adapt
his acts to the promotion of the collective interests of
the community V is the crucial question of ethics,
and tests, more than any other, the soundness of
ethical analysis.

It is not to be doubted that Mr. Mill is right in
thinking that that class of obligatory considerations
distinguished as external sanctions, belongs to the
utilitarian morality quite as much as to any other
possible system ; but the same cannot be said of
the internal sanctions. There is some vagueness in
the treatment of this question of sanctions in Ben-
tham's hands ; and we do not find that Mr. Mill
has done anything to remove it. An external sanc
tion, in the strictest sense, is a force operating on a
man ab extra, inducing or compelling him to do a
certain act. These sanctions generally admit of
being referred to one of two classes — the sanction of
the Approbation of man, or the sanction of the Ap- "
probation of God. But it is evident that these two
sanctions may be efficacious in two ways, which
we may distinguish as the direct and indirect, or
the primary and secondary. Bentham rests their
force on the consequences which may flow from
them, beneficial or detrimental, to other (and as we
should say, lower) 'interests/ than the love of the
approbation of man and the love of the approbation
of God in themselves. The same tendency exhibits
itself in the majority of utilitarian writers. Now,

H

ii4 Mr. Mill.

while we admit the force of these secondary or in
direct consequences of sanctions originating ab extra,
it is not to be denied that the mere displeasure of
our fellow-men, and still more the displeasure of the
Almighty, are in themselves a ground of moral pain,
just as their opposites are sources of a high feli
city. As was to be expected from Mr. Mill's recogni
tion of the qualitative element in ends and motives,
the direct or primary operation of the external sanc
tions also finds a place in his system, although it is
not drawn out as a distinguishing characteristic of
New-utilitarianism, but merely indicated in a general
way, thus : ' [The external sanctions] are the hope of
favour and the fear of displeasure from our fellow-
creatures or from the Euler of the universe, along
with whatever we may have of sympathy or affection
for them, or of love and awe of Him inclining us to
do His will independently of selfish consequences.'
This, along with other passages, may be accepted as an
intimation by Mr. Mill that he includes, among moral
sanctions, the primary pains and pleasures of human and
divine approbation as well as the secondary or deriva
tive. If this be so, it is of importance to remark the
conclusion to which this leads in the department of
ethical psychology ; namely, that man has an instinc
tive or innate sentiment of love of Approbation. If
we add this to the instinctive sentiment of Good-will,
which we, some pages back, deduced as a necessary con
sequence from Mr. Mill's doctrine of ends, we have the
satisfaction of finding that Mr. Mill's ethical system,

Mr. Mill. 1 1 5

if fully exhibited, would begin with claiming for man
certain sentiments as instinctive or innate. If we are
right, Mr. Mill's New-utilitarianism requires revision,
and must ultimately take the form of an explicit
subjective eudoemonism ; if we are wrong, much of
what might be called the virtuous and sentimental
halo in which he continues to envelop the bald doc
trine of objective utility is shown to be no longer the
native and self-produced atmosphere of his doctrine,
but a bright reflection caught from the glory of an
other and a better system.

Let us now pass to the question of internal sanc
tions, that is to say, sanctions that originate within,
for all sanctions are ultimately in their effect internal.
Mr. Mill's internal sanctions — and herein there is a
wide departure from the position of the Old-utilitarian
ism and a large addition to its moral resources — may
be summed up as — (1.) The subjective feeling of duty;
(2.) A conviction of the community and harmony of
our aims and interests with those of our fellow-men.
The latter is the ultimate sanction of the ' Greatest-
happiness' morality, the feeling of 'duty' being
associated with it more or less closely according to
the clearness of the apprehension or the education of
the individual agent. Now, if we consider this ulti
mate internal sanction or inner binding force, we find
that it may be analysed into two elements : first, an
intellectual perception on the part of each individual
member of society, that his own interests can be pro-

u6 Mr. Mill.

moted only if subordinated to the promotion of the
general interest, which is a merely prudential, calcu
lating, selfish, and quantitative consideration, and
throws us back into the crudest form of Utilitarianism ;
secondly, a feeling that his happiness is imperfect,
unless attained with due regard to the superior claims
of the happiness of the community of which he forms
a part. Mr. Mill, in his argument, does not carry out
this distinction ; on the contrary, the two elements of
his ultimate sanction are so inextricably intertwined as
to lead to a painful confusion in the exposition. The
former of the two elements we at once set aside as
already disposed of in the consideration of right ends,
and as unworthy even of New-utilitarianism, much
more of any subjective theory of obligation. The
second element seems to be seized by Mr. Mill in
those passages in which he refers to the basis of ' natural
sentiment, which lies at the foundation of the ultimate
utilitarian sanction/ l This firm foundation/ he says,
' is that of the social feelings of mankind ; the desire
to be in unity with our fellow-creatures, which is
already a powerful principle in human nature, and
happily one of those which tend to become stronger,
even without express inculcation from the influences
of advancing civilisation/ And further on he says,
' Whatever amount of this feeling a person has, he is
urged by the strongest motives, both of interest and
of sympathy, to demonstrate it, and to the utmost of
his power encourage it in others : ' ' The smallest
germs of the feeling are laid hold of and encouraged

Mr. Mill. 1 1 7

by the contagion of sympathy and the influences of
education ; and a complete web of corroborative
association is woven round it by the powerful agency
of the external sanctions/ From all which it follows,
that the basis of the ultimate sanction, and, conse
quently, the ultimate sanction itself of the Eight, is,
according to Mr. Mill, neither more nor less than the
Social Feeling which is instinctive in man, as in many
other animals, and which, apart from ulterior considera
tions of interest, forbids his ever permanently regarding
himself as a mere unit, and compels him to regard
himself as one of a community, and to have supreme
regard to that community in all that he does.

But in so far as this is a fading, it is neither more
nor less than sympathy of man with man — a sym
pathy causing him to court the company of his kind,
and to understand their pleasures and their pains
through his own. We admit the soundness of this
sympathetic basis so far, and recognise in it a
foundation on which skilful politicians may, in the
course of generations, erect a superstructure of regard
for the interests of others ; nay more, of supreme
regard for those interests. Without this basis of
natural sympathy, it would be impossible to speak
intelligently or intelligibly of the common interest,
or show how a sovereign regard for it re-acts in
a thousand ways on the interests of the individual
who is required to take it as his ethical standard.
Having served this purpose, however, its power is ex
hausted. It gives the politician facilities for bringing

n8 Mr. Mill.

external sanctions to bear on his fellow-men, whether
these be the external sanctions which affect his senti
ments, or those which affect personal felicities of a
lower quality. Mr. Mill's instinctive sympathetic
social sense renders all this possible ; but having done
this it can do no more. To attribute more to it, and
to elevate it into the inner sanction of the Eight, is
to mistake the nature of sympathy. Through sym
pathy we understand what is in others, and we may
also be drawn towards them because of their likeness
to ourselves ; but no movement of active interest in
their welfare, not even a distant regard for it, could
arise without an inner moving force — the force of
love, good-will, or benevolence.

Does Mr. Mill mean to convey all this as implied in
the sympathetic social sense ? He certainly hovers
round the active side of the sentiment, as if he would
fain appropriate it as the ultimate binding force of
utilitarianism. If it be not implicitly contained
in Mr. Mill's social sense, then it is manifestly vain
to talk of there being any inner sanction of utili
tarianism, or any ultimate sanction whatsoever, other
than those external sanctions, primary and derivative,
of which we have already spoken. If, on the other
hand, the active sentiment of good-will be implicitly
contained in the social sense, then the ultimate sanc
tion of the ' Greatest-Happiness' morality is the
inner force which stimulates us to achieve for our
selves the subjective felicity of an active good-will,
and which inflicts pain if this other-regarding senti-

Mr. Mill. 1 1 9

ment be superseded by the self-regarding motives.
Disguise it as we may, the force which ultimately
and chiefly impels us to shape our conduct with a
supreme regard to the general well-being, is this sub
jective felicity of an active good-will. Does it not
follow, then, that our ethical psychology must recog
nise in man an innate sentiment of good-will, and
that inasmuch as this sentiment is the chief motive-
power influencing the individual's acts, the satisfac
tion of this sentiment is also the purpose or end of
the individual's activity? To ask even the New-
utilitarian explicitly to admit this, would be to re
quire him to substitute subjective ends for objective
ends as the standard of rightness in acting. But
should he do so, he need fear no detriment to the in
terests of humanity ; for while, among conflicting
motives and ends, good-will, as motive and end, is
to reign supreme, it is manifest that the moment the
individual agent has achieved inner harmony and
moral unity by the identification of his will with the
other-regarding sentiment, his next business is to see
that he does not fail of his purpose and that the
benevolent activity is not abortive. His act has an
outer history in the future, no less than his energizing
has had a subjective history in the past. He must
see to it that the suggestions of good-will are truly
so designed as to achieve their objective end — the
highest happiness of mankind. His energizing has
been moral, right, praiseworthy, good. He must
make sure that the results of the energizing are apt,

120 Mr. Mill.

fit, wise, intelligent. To discover this, he is again
necessarily thrown back on subjective ethics, and is
compelled to form for himself a scheme, however
crude, of man's nature and of his true good.

Were New-utilitarianism once distinctly to take
up this subjective eudsemonistic position, a great step
would be made towards a reconciliation with the In
tuitional school. For the latter school, when ade
quately represented, does not omit from its system
the external sanctions of the right, or the inner sanc
tion of felicity in acting in conformity to the right.
Its chief deviation from a subjective eudaemonism is
to be found in its doctrine of an inner law as at
once, arbitrarily and without regard to felicity, dis
criminating the Eight, and authoritatively imposing
the obligation to do it.

Mr. Mill's chapter on sanctions is followed by one
which aims at giving the proof of the utilitarian
doctrine. The argument runs thus : Questions about
ends are questions about things desirable. The Utili
tarian doctrine is, that Happiness is alone desirable
as an end, all other desirable things being only means
to that end. That Happiness is an end, can be
proved only by appealing to the consciousness of each,
and showing that each desires it for himself. If indi
vidual happiness is desirable as an end, it follows that
the aggregate happiness, or the happiness of the sum
of individuals, is desirable. But Happiness, indi
vidual and aggregate, is not merely an end — it is

Mr. Mill. 1 2 1

the sole final end. It is true that virtue is also
desired as an end in a certain sense ; but this and
certain other seeming ends are in truth only means
to the final end, happiness. Virtue is desired as
a part of happiness, and as a means to it, ' What
ever/ he says, ' is desired otherwise than as a
means to some end beyond itself, and ultimately
to happiness, is desired as itself a part of happiness,
and is not desired for itself, until it has become so.
Those who desire Virtue for its own sake, desire it
either because the consciousness of it is a pleasure, or
because the consciousness of being without it is a
pain, or for both reasons united/ The validity of the
proof depends on its being a fact that human nature
is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not
either a part of happiness, or a means of happiness.
For evidence of this, we can only appeal to the con
sciousness of men, which will respond that ' to desire
anything except in proportion as the idea of it is
pleasant, is a physical and metaphysical impossibility/
We set aside for the time Mr. Mill's notion of virtue.
Like his notion of duty (to which also we here only
make a passing allusion), it is derived from a vague
and confused popular interpretation of popular terms.
It would be easy to show that in the case of the latter
term, his notion is as inadequate as in the case of the
former it is a misapprehension. We content ourselves
with asking, ' Assuming the validity of the above argu
ment, what has been proved V That Happiness is the
sole desirable end of the individual's action, and by con-

122 Mr. Mill.

sequence of the action of the sum of individuals, that
is to say, of each of all individuals ; the latter part of
the proposition being simply a larger statement of the
former part. Without entering into the logomachy
of happiness ends, and virtue ends, and duty ends,
we would take up Mr. Mill's own position for a
moment, and ask, whether the above propositions do
distinctly enounce that the final end, and, therefore,
the ultimate test or criterion of rightness for each
individual agent, is the individual's Happiness ? If
this be so — and, with the best intentions, we cannot
see that Mr. Mill's argument admits of any other in
terpretation — we find ourselves quite away from
the ground of utilitarianism, as again and again
insisted on by himself, and thrown into the arms of a
subjective eudsemonism. Mr. Mill, in truth, hovers
on the confines of this region from the first page of
his book to the last, and consequently, in his rehabili
tation of Benthamism, he has been led into manifold
assumptions in argument, and inconsistencies of lan
guage ; but now he seems to have fairly crossed the
border, and to find himself permanently settled in a
new region — the region of subjective ethics.

And yet, blind to the true significance of his own
utterances, he remains so hampered by the Bentham
ite net- work which he wove round his intellect in
his youth, that he is betrayed in one portion of his
argument into defining the happiness which is the
end of life and of morality as an aggregate of many
pleasurable ingredients, thereby losing sight of the

Mr. Mill. 123

moral question altogether, and identifying happi
ness as a test of action with happiness in the vulgar
acceptation — a resultant, pleasurable self-complacency.
Why, even according to his most explicit statements
elsewhere, this is not a true definition even of the end
and criterion of those acts of a man which directly or
indirectly affect others ; for the happiness of others
by which conduct is to be tested is not such quanti
tative happiness— which would give us a system of
pure hedonism — but the highest happiness of others,
even though the attaining of this should cause the
agent to subject both himself and others to grievous
toils and pains.

When next we approach Mr. Mill's doctrine of
Justice, which occupies a large portion of his book,
we find ourselves going over again the argumentative
ground already traversed ; but on this branch of the
ethical question, if the Old- utilitarian position was
strong, that of the New-utilitarian is almost impreg
nable. Admitting this, and also perceiving that New-
utilitarians and Intuitionalists are in this practical
region substantially at one, we are naturally led to
inquire into the grounds of this sudden reconciliation.
The reconciliation is accounted for by the fact that the
Intuitionalist has here left behind him moral ques
tions, as he rightly understands morality, and is con
cerned solely with those overt and transitive acts which
affect the well-being, moral and physical, of his fellow-
men. Accordingly, he can cordially unite with the

124 Mr. Mill.

New-utilitarian in the objective end of all transitive
acts, and with him recognise the ' highest' happiness
of the community as the criterion of these. In this
region of what might be called distributive morality,
there is no conflict. In truth, were the utilitarian but
once for all clearly to see that his discussions for the
most part do not revolve round the questions of ethics
strictly speaking, but have to do only with political
ethics, which concerns itself with the distribution of
felicities, the way would be cleared for the mutual
understanding of the opposing schools of philosophy.

The doctrine of Justice, we have said, in its objective
relations can call forth no reclaiming statement from
Intuitionalists, as we understand intuitionalism : but
when the question necessarily arises, ' What is the
sentiment of Justice?' psychologically speaking, and
' What are the sanctions of Just willing V the conflict
is resumed with as keen hostility as ever. Mr. Mill
tells us that ' whatever is moral' in the sentiment of
Justice arises 'from the idea of expediency' — a posi
tion which carries him back as far as Hobbes, and far
away from the subjective theory towards which in
other parts of his essay he seems to be approximating.

To enter upon this large question with due regard to
its importance would involve very many pages of dis
cussion, and has in its chief aspects been anticipated
elsewhere.1 We content ourselves, therefore, with
pointing out that both the Old and the New-utilitarian
rest the interpretation and obligation of the just act, as

1 Philosophy of Ethics, chapter on Justice.

Mr. Mill. 125

of all morality, on external sanctions. The Old-utili
tarian finds its obligatoriness in sanctions which origin
ate in the will of others than the agent. The New-
utilitarian adds, or at least may consistently add, to
those outward penal sanctions, the inner reproaches of
conscience, although he has not yet ventured to define
what he means by these. This inadequate view of
the obligation of Justice compels both schools of
utilitarians to look persistently only at the negative
aspect of the question, and to offer a definition of the
sentiment of Injustice for a definition of the senti
ment of Justice — practically identifying both with
what is only a partial definition of the former, namely,
the desire to inflict retaliatory punishment.1 This
negative aspect of the sentiment is certainly chrono
logically prior in the experience of man to the positive.
But though it is thus the beginning, it is not therefore
the source or fountain of the positive sentiment.

It follows also, from the view of obligation taken by
both old and new utilitarians, that the specific and
differentiating characteristic of a right or 'rights'
which enters into both the notion and the sentiment
of Justice, is supposed to be adequately indicated by
saying that it is resolvable into ' an apprehended hurt
to some assignable person or persons on the one hand,
and a desire to punish on the other/2 The • whole
sentiment of Justice, therefore, of which the notion or
feeling of a right forms confessedly only a part, is
thus represented as differing from the latter solely in

1 Pp. 76-78 of Mill's Utilitarianism. 2 Ibid. p. 79.

126 Mr. Mill.

the fact of the superinduction of the social feeling.
But inasmuch as the apprehension of a hurt to some
assignable person involves the sympathy of the spec
tator, and inasmuch as sympathy, according to Mr.
Mill, constitutes the essence of the social feeling— it
follows that in New-utilitarianism the notion of a
right in no respect differs from the sentiment of
Justice itself. Thus the figure which it was necessary
to add to the notion of a right in order to complete
the sentiment of Justice is at best a cipher without a
multiplying power.

In conclusion, we can assure Mr. Mill that it is no
necessary part of the creed of Intuitionalism (although
the generalities in which its defenders too often
indulge justify his criticism) to hold that 'Justice is
wholly independent of utility, and is a standard per
se which the mind can recognise by simple intro
spection of itself/ We no more believe this than that
the terms Eight, Duty, Conscience defy analysis,
and are invested with a sacredness which should pro
hibit it.

The exposition which we have endeavoured to
give of utilitarianism as advocated by Mr. Mill, brief
though it has necessarily been, will suffice at least
to suggest the relation of his doctrine to past and
present theories ; and if, in our estimate of it, we can
not admit that it possesses so consistent and thorough
going a character as the parent utilitarianism of
Bentham, it is gratifying to find that its deficiencies

Mr. Mill. 127

in respect of logical precision and inner consistency
are due to a deeper sensibility and a wider reach of
thought than were characteristic of the older doctrine,
and consequently give good promise of an approach to
that non-personal subjective sentimental eudsemonism
in which are to be found, we believe, the elements of
the reconciliation of a strife which has lasted for more
than two thousand years.

28 Professor Bain.

PROFESSOK BAIN'S UTILITAKIANISM.1

AMONG other remarks which indicate the dubious
attitude assumed by Mr. Mill towards utilitarianism,
is a footnote on p. 73 of his essay, in which he
speaks in terms of strong laudation of Mr. Bain's
ethical views. A more careful consideration of these,
especially in their connexion with Mr. Bain's Disser
tations and Notes on Paley, which are in perfect
harmony with more recent expressions of opinion,
would have shown Mr. Mill that, except in the recog
nition of Honour and the Virtues as existing in some

o

artistic region of man's nature, Mr. Bain out-Ben tham's
Bentham, and revives the very doctrines which Mr.
Mill has laboured to qualify and amend. Were it not,
indeed, for this reactionary character of Mr. Bain's
writings — reactionary as against advanced utilitarian
ism itself — it might not be necessary here to exhibit
their tendencies.

' To illustrate further the nature of right/ says
Mr. Bain, ' we would remark that obligation implies
punishment. Where a penalty cannot be inflicted,
there is no effective obligation ; and in cases where,
although rules have been violated, punishment is not

1 As the basis of our remarks on Mr. Bain, we have taken the Disserta
tions and Notes on Paley, collating these, however, with his work on the
Emotions and the Will

Professor Bain . 129

considered proper, obligation is virtually denied. We
find, for example, that there is no disposition to
punish men for not being benevolent ; and, therefore,
we must presume that benevolence is not held to be
a universal and indispensable duty. . . . Punish
ment means the infliction of positive pain or evil in
amount proportioned to the degree and the continu
ance of the offence.' l

This theory of obligation or moral law contains im
plicitly Mr. Bain's theory of morality. By permitting
the question of obligation to override the question of
moral ends, and, consequently, of the standard of the
right, he has, in our opinion, introduced further con
fusion into ethical science. This confusion he has suc
ceeded in overcoming, in so far as the consistency of
his own thought is concerned, by giving a special and
arbitrary definition to the term obligation. If that
only is a matter of obligation which society compels a
man to do under pain of suffering, and which his per
sonal and physical security compels him to do under a
similar penalty, it follows that morality proper is con
fined within the sphere of the penal ; and that all
acts other than those which are so essential to per
sonal and social security as to fall under the notice of
the police, lie outside the moral, the right, the obliga
tory, and require to be arranged under some new name.

Ends of Action. — Accordingly, when we turn to
the dissertation on the ends of action, we find these

1 Notes on Paley, p. 86.

I

r 30 Professor Bain.

classified as ends of primary, secondary, and what we
may call tertiary1 morality, according to the extent
of the obligatoriness. Primary morality includes all
those acts which bear so directly on personal and
social Security as to be subjects of legislation, written
or unwritten, and which are consequently of full obli
gation. Secondary morality embraces such acts of
benevolence as exceed the legal demands of society,
and are of less obligation. Lastly, such acts of noble
ness, self-sacrifice, purity, heroism as call forth our
admiration, in consequence of their being akin to the
beautiful and sublime in nature and art, may be in
cluded under the head of tertiary, or, as it might
also be denominated, artistic morality.

Let us shortly look at these Moral ends in their
order.

The following quotations convey with sufficient
clearness Mr. Bain's doctrine of Primary morality : —

' Man has, under an instinct of self-preservation,
the care of his own being, or the maintenance of his
bodily existence, with the provision of all things
essential thereto/ . . . 'The rules and maxims of
bodily prudence come to be improved and refined
upon as intelligence is expanded, and, at the same
time, new motives of obedience are brought into play/
. . . 'The end of prudential morality may, there
fore, be assumed to be the preservation and the plea
sure of the individual/ . . . ' The uniform practice

1 This term tertiary is not employed by Mr. Bain, but it is implied in his
classifications, and the employment of it helps to bring out his meaning.

Professor Bain. 1 3 1

observed among human beings of forming associa
tions among themselves, and living in mutual de
pendence, puts a new face upon the necessities, and
therefore upon the conduct and duties of indi
vidual men and women/ . . . ' An enlargement of
the circle of pleasures and pains, and of the motive
to action that these furnish, is the consequence of
man's sociability ; moreover, the mere necessities of
life, the means of bodily sustenance and security, are
better obtained by social co-operation/ . . . Thus
it gradually comes about that ' the [instinctive] re
vulsion against personal harm is equally excited by a
wrong done to the society that protects the person
and secures its means of subsistence. A man must
no more sin against the order of the society that he
lives among, than against his daily bread and nightly
shelter. The duties of obedience and social rule are
duties of self-preservation, and have always been felt
as such where we human beings have been drawn
into social unions/ ... * Hence obedience to Law
and the social virtues being indispensable to man's
very existence, have the highest degree of obligation
and imperative force that any consideration in the
whole compass of being can possess/

The end and motive of primary morality then is
the comfort and security of the individual agent.
Even those acts which he does nominally for society
are done in reality for himself. There are, it is true;
many classes of social acts which are held to be
imperative, which do not seem at first sight to fall

132 Professor Bain.

under the head of primary morality, and which, there
fore, have not the strongest claim on our obedience.
Such, for example, are those acts indicated by the
word Integrity. But, according to Mr. Bain, if we
look closer at the matter, we shall find that this virtue
is necessary to the social well-being and to the pro
gress of civilisation. ' It may be proved to have its
roots in the highest necessities and most salient
benefits of human life/ Integrity, then, is to be
cultivated for the sake of the social security : and
as we have seen that the social security is to govern
our acts, because it is merely a disguised personal
security, it follows that integrity is to be practised
'because it promotes the individual's personal security
and comfort.

But there are other virtues, such as Benevolence,
Purity, Justice, Obedience to law. What of these 1
They too, it seems, derive their obligatory character
from their bearing on the social security and comfort;
and ' the recognised duties and virtues of the ordinary
morality' derive their validity (in so far, we presume,
as they may or can be legitimately enforced) from
their contributing to ' the ends bodily preservation
and social security ;' that is to say, really and ulti
mately, the comfort and security of the individual
acting. That all the virtues, in so far as they belong
to the primary morality, are only an indirect means
of obtaining comfort and security for the individual
who is called upon to practise them, is an inevitable
consequence of Mr. Bain's reasoning. In truth, it

Professor Bain. 1 33

constitutes his reasoning, — the thin disguise of utility
and social felicity being occasionally thrown over the
bare skeleton of the lowest form of selfism. It is at
once manifest that this is an extreme form of the
Benthamite utilitarianism. The high standard of the
'Greatest Happiness on the whole/ as the ground
of obligation for practising social duties and social
virtues, and as giving to society its right to inflict
penalties, is lost sight of. The development is a
natural one ; it is the fruit of a logical mind em
ployed upon the Benthamite doctrine in all its logical
hardness, and endeavouring to give it scientific and
systematic exposition. In the effort to do so, there
is an inevitable relapse into Hobbism. That this is
so, must be apparent to any one who can see that
the primary ground of any social duty must be either
calculating selfism, or sentiment, or law ; either an
extended and refined personal prudence, the exhibi
tion and gratification of a specific characteristic of
rational minds, or obedience to duty.

Obligation. — If we have correctly explained Mr.
Bain's theory of primary moral ends and the grounds
of obligation, we have, by implication, given expres
sion to his standard or criterion of Tightness. That
act is right which is calculated to advance the indi
vidual agent's personal security as the member of a
community. Mr. Bain may decline to accept this
inference : it is nevertheless correct. The criterion of
Tightness is thus brought back to a personal or sub-

134 Professor Bain.

jective standard, and society is deprived of all right
to impose primary morality, except in so far as it
derives it from its might. The majority, in respect
of power (not necessarily of numbers) originates
duties and virtues, and authoritatively declares them.
In other words, the State is the source of right ; and
thus we again encounter the crudest Hobbism.

Mr. Bain would probably here direct attention to the
fact, that under primary morality he speaks only of
those classes of acts which society has a right to
enforce by legal penalties ; and that in his secondary
morality the same virtues which have been treated
in their primary and binding character reappear as
qualities not ' absolutely binding/ but laudable and
desirable in each and all, and as being, in some sense,
obligatory. The answer to this is to be found in his
own treatment of the subject. On pages 15 and 88 of
his edition of Paley, it will be found that of all the
virtues, Benevolence (as a form of tenderness) alone
comes before us as having a quasi-obligation. Even
of it he says, * that actions of pure benevolence [that
is to say, exceeding the legal or enforceable demand]
do not come within the scope of obligatory duty, but
are in a manner left open to the choice of the indi
vidual.' It is true that on more than one occasion
he feels himself hard pushed to hold his ground, and
under the influence of this pressure, or, it may be, of
intellectual confusion, he introduces benevolence as a
primary duty ; as when he says (p. 6), ' The affec
tions and sympathies felt by a man towards his

Professor Bain. 135

fellows may be a source of disinterested regard to
their interests in common with his own/ Again
(p. 11), 'The virtue of humanity or benevolence
commends itself as being the offspring of one of the
most powerful and luxurious of our constitutional
impulses ; namely, the emotion of natural tenderness,
which enters into and sweetens all the relations of
mutual dependence/ Further, at a later stage of his
argument, when treating of the Secondary morality,
that is to say, of the exercise of a kind of overplus of
benevolence, or what we might fitly call gratuitous
acts of good-will, he, in despair of finding any ground
of real obligation for enforcing a duty so fraught with
good consequences, slips into the statement not ex
plicitly made, but rather evaded in the treatment of
the Primary morality, viz., ' As our primary morality
would have (sic) to include the cardinal virtue of
benevolence or humanity, we might/ etc. Notwith
standing, however, these misplaced and inadvertent
observations, we find not only in the passages already
quoted, but pervading the whole argument, the propo
sition that benevolence falls under primary morality,
that is to say, is obligatory, only in so far as it con
tributes to personal security and comfort. 'Every
human being has a positive interest in it. We are
all liable to fall into dependent situations ; therefore,'
etc. Moreover, as a motive for acting with benevo
lence, we are told that we have to lay up store not
only of worldly good, but, with a view to possible
exigencies, we ' must lay up a character that will

1 36 Professor Bain.

sustain the pressure of evil days/ Accordingly we
conclude that benevolence enters into enforceable or
primary morality on the same terms as integrity, of
which it is said, * If there be any cases where a breach
of integrity can produce no evil consequences of any
kind, either relating to the bonds of society, retarding
the cause of truth, inducing a habit of un veracity, or
exciting suspicion or distrust, there would scarcely
exist any conceivable motive for enforcing the practice
of this virtue/ So of Purity, Justice, and so forth.
We are accordingly compelled to regard Benevolence
and all other virtues as being obligatory, only in so
far as by reaction and interaction they promote the
personal comfort and security of the agent.

The free exercise of benevolence, without regard to
the reactive benefits accruing to the agent is, however,
in some sense, it appears, a moral duty. The duties
of the primary morality, Mr. Bain says, are not ' the
whole duty of man/ In what sense then, we would
ask, is the virtue of benevolence, exercised purely, and
without regard to reversions, a moral duty? If a
moral duty, it must be in some sense obligatory ; and
yet we are told (p. 86) that 'actions which people are
charged to perform, but are not punished for neglect
ing, may be looked upon as having the form of obliga
tion without the reality ;' and (p. 88) that ' actions of
pure benevolence do not come within the scope of
obligatory duty, but are in a manner left open to the
choice of the individual/ ' In a manner' left open !

Professor Bain. 137

And this is all the light that is thrown on the duties
of pure Benevolence, of Integrity, Purity, Justice (out
side the common law), and so forth. Either these are
duties or they are not, either they are obligatory or
they are not. If the former, to what or whom are
they due, by what law are they enforced ? If the
latter, why speak of them as moral duties at all, or
as moralities in any sense whatsoever ?

In the midst of this confusion we turn back again
to the Dissertation on ends of human action and find
these virtues talked of as * moral duties strictly so
called ' (p. 7), and as ends of human action, but ' not
equally binding with the primary moral ends/ and
again (p. 17), as 'the less imperative duties/ Our
confusion is thus increased : they are imperative, and
yet not imperative ; obligatory, and yet not obligatory.

If this theory of ends and obligations be true of the
secondary moralities, in so far as they are not penally
enforceable by society, how much more is it applicable to
those heroic exhibitions of virtue which belong to what
we have termed the tertiary morality. Devotion, self-
sacrifice, magnanimity, unbending integrity, heroism,
which are the most perfect exhibitions of morality,
are not so much moral as artistic, says Mr. Bain, and
are ' sought not so much from [their] necessity in
human life as from the fascination and charm which
they yield to the actor and beholder/ These qualities
of character do not come, he says, ' within the scope
of the obligatory/ And, in truth, since the virtues,
as such, are imperative, if at all, in a vague, undefined,

1 38 Professor Bain.

and undefinable sense, it would be unreasonable to
expect Mr. Bain to allow any obligation to attach to
the heroic manifestation of them.

And yet, according to the same author, the nobilities
and graces of character, and the virtues as such, are
ends. We would ask, in what sense can there be for
any rational intelligence a true end which is not also
ipso facto, so far forth, a duty — an obligation ? Mr.
Bain seems in one passage to see this himself; for, when
speaking of Dignity, he says, ' Every creature possesses
along with its natural constitution a sense of what
that constitution is fit for, and what will put its
capacities to the best account : and with this sense
there is a certain feeling of the high propriety, if not
obligation, so to employ itself. As our knowledge of
character improves, we are better able to appreciate
this fitness, and to feel the corresponding obligation/
After all, then, there is, it seems, a sense of obligation
attending even the tertiary morality — the morality of
the heroic. If so, how much more must the obliga
tion impose itself on the more moderate exhibitions of
the same virtues from all connexion with which it has
been excluded !

Until we rid our minds and argument of his over
riding theory of obligation, we shall not see our way
clearly through the conflicting statements of Mr. Bain.
He ought, in the first instance, to have confined himself
to ends. These once determined, we may obtain some
light on the nature of obligation, and, consequently,

Professor Ba in . 139

of the greater or less imperativeness of certain classes
of acts. The virtues, in their moderate and heroic
form, are in some places admitted by Mr. Bain to
be laudable, desirable, and admirable ends of human
action. Not only so, — they are, according to him,
ends which transcend the primary morality, differing
from it mainly in this, that they are more than
we can fairly ask of men — very much more than
we can rightfully enforce. But if they are ends, it
seems to us that they not only ought to be sought
after, but because of their transcendent character
and their comprehension of all lower moralities, they
ought to be chiefly sought after. If ends, and
therefore duties, in what sense can it be said that
they are not obligatory? The apparent self-contra
diction arises from a peculiar definition of the word
obligatory, as being synonymous with that which can
or may be enforced by fines, imprisonments, and
corporal inflictions. Had Mr. Bain confined himself
in the first instance to ends, apart from the question
of obligations, he would have found that every true
end of any intelligence is a duty for that intelligence,
and that its highest end is its highest duty. In the
end itself he would have found the obligation. By
these means he would have been led to a definition of
obligation which would have shown wherein primary
obligation consists, and whence it is derived ; and
he would have found that external penalties and all
derivative sanctions are in truth only the secondary
and adventitious supports of morality.

140 Professor Bain.

If Mr. Bain had with boldness and consistency
said, ' There is nothing in the so-called " virtues " or
heroisms except a kind of deification of certain words,
which, when analysed, reveal nothing but expedients
for preserving the individual and the community in
security and comfort, and that man has been so con
stituted that he imagines that he follows after a divine
idea when in truth he is only looking after his own
security/ his scheme of ethics would at least have
had the merit of being scientific. But he does not do
so. For, under the name of tenderness, he admits
the existence of an innate sentiment of benevolence
which has itself for its end. Admitting this, he must
also admit those virtues to be ends in themselves
into which benevolence enters, such as self-sacrifice,
justice, etc. Nor, indeed, can we find that he does
not admit this in the case of all virtues which rest on
the sentiments. If, therefore, he will only define
anew the word Obligation, under the influence of a
consideration of all three classes of ethical ends, as
laid down by himself, instead of confining himself to
the first and lowest, he will find the true source of pri
mary obligation where he will find the ends — namely,
in the moral nature of the agent himself. Police ethics
will then make way for the ethics of man, and find
their true place in the moral code, as the lowest mani
festation of those sentiments which constitute the
governing elements in human nature, and which cover,
on the one hand, the duties which man owes to man,
and on the other, those which the individual owes to

Professor Bain. 141

himself and to God. And when he has thus found in
this subjective doctrine a reconciliation of his own
contradictory utterances as to ends and obligations, he
will have no difficulty in finding, in the same subjec
tive sphere in which he has found ends and primary
obligations, a criterion of the right which assigns
its true significance to the quantitative morality of
utilitarianism, while giving its weight to a loftier
scheme of human duty. His ethical vision will take
a larger sweep, and not confine itself to those acts
which society has a right to control, the consideration
of which constitutes a fitting introduction to a treatise
on Jurisprudence, but only a small part of Morality.

The fundamental error of Mr. Bain and of all utili
tarians is their persistent and exclusive regard to the
political side of human actions. Hence their objec
tive treatment of morality as a thing of external ends
and external sanctions. They forget the individual
moral agent in the needs and well-being of society
at large, and thus fix attention on the effect of acts
on the common happiness (by which they mean widely
diffused comfort arid enjoyments) to the exclusion of
the character of the acting. If they would but con
sent to individualize their moral speculations, they
would discover that what moralists have concern with
is the right acting of the individual : that is to say,
energizing in accordance with the ultimate ends of
man as man ; and that the social end falls within the
larger subjective end as a part of it. The right social
acting, for example, is that acting which conforms to

142 Professor Bain,

the sentiments of benevolence and justice, and yields
them fruition ; the right social act is that act which
truly attains the external purpose of the sentiment.

Criterion of Rightness. — Our business hitherto has
mainly been to allow Mr. Bain to criticise himself, and
to justify one of our opening sentences, in which we
charge him with having worse confounded the already
prevalent confusions of ethical polemics. We have
still to inquire into Mr. Bain's criterion of rightness ;
for although the doctrine of a moral criterion is im
plicitly contained in the doctrine of moral ends, it
is yet necessary to consider these questions apart.
We have to look for Mr. Bain's criterion in his
chapters on the Moral Sense, and on Obligation.
In the former (p. 30) he tells us that the standard
or criterion is an external one. This it was natural
to expect as a consequence from his theory of ends
and obligations. That act, he says, is right the
whole assignable effects of which on sentient crea
tures is such as to promote their well-being ; and he
illustrates this position by the supposed case of dis
criminate and indiscriminate almsgiving. In the
latter case, he says, we have complied with an in
stinctive morality (which, so far, is not denied), while
in the latter we have a morality which commends
itself both ' to the sentiments and to the reason/ From
this we are surely entitled to conclude that there is
an inner standard of sentiment which determines the
class of act which we are to perform, while observa-

Professor Bain. 143

tion and reason determine the true bearing and ulti
mate incidence of the act. Suppose the act to be
productive of moral or physical harm to the bene
ficiary, it is wrong ; but why ? Because, we should
say, it is thereby shown not to be what it affects to
be — a benevolent act. The right thing, after all, then
is the conformity of the will with the inner sentiment
of benevolence ; the individual is right when he con
forms to this, although he may defeat his moral purpose
by inattention to the outer expression of the inner con
dition of Tightness. Conformity with the sentiment
might be called the major premiss, of which the minor is
the specific act. Had Mr. Bain ignored the sentiments,
or denied them, or held to his treatment of them else
where1 as caprices of the individual, vagaries of popular
feeling, or irrational impositions of religious teachers,
he would not have fallen into the contradictions under
which his whole argument labours. He vigorously
asserts his utilitarian position with respect to ends,
criterion, and obligations ; and yet, in every page of
his dissertations on Paley, and frequently in his other
writings, he inadvertently takes possession of the doc
trines of another school, and inserts them in his para
graphs as if they rightfully belonged to his argument.
We are thus led into much painful perplexity in any
attempt at interpretation. The above mode of putting
the utilitarian external standard is an illustration of
what we mean. We are told that the criterion of
right is external, and then, before the paragraph is

1 Emotions and the Will, p. 309, etc.

144 Professor Bain.

concluded, we are told that, by looking to the external
effects of an act, we satisfy the claims of the senti
ments as well as of the reason. From which the barest
conclusion that can be drawn is that the sentiments
are somehow involved in the criterion of the right.

Nor do we find any light thrown on these contradic
tions by reference to his definition of the opposing in
ternal standard against which he argues. There is a
cold recklessness in the assertions, that by the in
ternal standard of morality is meant ' the liking or
disliking of the individual to the action, apart
altogether from its consequences/1 and that the utili
tarian doctrine ' is a substitution of a regard to con
sequences for a mere unreasoning sentiment or feel
ing/2 It is scarcely credible that Mr. Bain can have
given so little attention to other lines of thought than
his own, as to suppose that a subjective moralist
inevitably puts the criterion of the right on the indi
vidual's ' liking/ and is utterly regardless of the con
nexion between the right acting and the consequences
of his act. There is a school of moralists which main
tains that the criterion is to be found in the authori
tative utterances of a Moral Sense which has no
regard to consequences ; but this school is not truly
represented except by those who confine the range of
this sense to denominations or qualities of acts only.
Still less is such a mode of defining the opinions of
intuitionalists true of sentimentalists proper. There
is no quarrel between them and the utilitarians as to

1 Notes on Palsy, p> 36. 2 Emotions, etc., p. 302.

Professor Bain. 145

the necessity of tracing acts into their consequences, in
order to ascertain whether they truly conform in their
final effects to the sentiment from which they sprang.
That which we have elsewhere expounded as subjec
tive eudsemonism, points out the true source of the
utilitarian error, namely, the non-distinction between
the right energizing and the right act which is the
effect of that energizing. Let this distinction be pre
served, and the question of the nature of the moral
act will so far be settled. The quarrel will then be
confined to psychological ground, and will be a ques
tion as to the nature of these major premisses or
sentiments, and the extent to which they are merely
self-created means to ends, and in themselves essen
tially illusory. We shall have to determine whether
they are thought- crystallizations of those generalized
precepts which tend to the social security, or innate
characteristics of all rational intelligences, and there
fore ends in themselves — ends of reason, although
necessarily having, each according to its nature, a
more or less extended history outside itself, which it is
our duty to trace and to consider.

In what sense, we would ask, can a thinker
maintain the purely external or objective standard
to the exclusion of the internal or subjective,
who admits into his argument such statements as
the following : — ' There is [in man] a strong feel
ing of the rightness of mutually dependent beings
acting kindly to each other/'1 So powerful is this

1 Notes on Paley, p. 38.
K

146 Professor Bain.

feeling or sense, that it ' tends to govern the sense of
right.' That is to say, the sense of Tightness tends to
govern the sense of right ! Then he speaks of the
' sense of the beautiful and becoming, as entering into
our judgments of right and wrong/ which means, I
presume, that the test of the lightness of certain
things is their beautifulness and becomingness. Then
gratitude, he tells us, is a duty ; and why ? There
are personal and social ' interests' which strengthen its
obligation ; but, over and above this, we are informed
' that it is called for by an imperious sentiment of moral
fitness and propriety : ' from which it appears that
there is a sentiment of moral fitness and propriety
which is in some instances a touchstone, test, or stan
dard of the right in conduct. Again, he says, ' The
sense of what is for the good of the individual, with
reference to the whole compass of being, easily chimes
in with the moral instincts.'' Again, he speaks of the
' elevating and ennobling impulses of our being/ and
so forth, until we are utterly at a loss to know on
what ground we stand.

Nor are our difficulties removed by finding senti
ments talked of as ' certain things founded in taste,
liking, aversion, or fancy/ and thus confounded with
idiosyncracies and caprices on the one hand, and con
ventional religious peculiarities on the other.1 The
cup of our surprise is full when we are told (after all
that has been said) that ethical inquiry has nothing to
do with ' the specific impulses and feelings of human

1 Emotions and the Will, pp. 306-309.

Professor Bain. 147

nature that come in to support the maxims of mora
lity/1 In other words, the sentimental and emotional
side of rational intelligences has nothing to do with
the right and obligatory energizing of these intelli
gences ! Such are the consequences of divorcing
psychology or the study of mind from the study of
the right life of the mind ; and of putting forward the
duties, which the majority of any community may
enforce by penalties, in the name of ethical science
properly so called.

To fortify his position against the intuitionalists,
Mr. Bain looks into history, and finds revealed ' in the
process of the enactment of moral rules' the true
source of moral precepts and practices, and, by conse
quence, the real standard to which intuitionalists daily
refer when they fancy they are appealing to an inner
discriminating Sense and authoritative law.2 A Solon,
a Lycurgus, a Mahomet, a George Fox, or the State
represented by some one individual clothed with
legislative authority, prescribe certain rules of conduct
which their followers or subjects accept and practice,
not as in themselves right, but through blind faith in
the utterer. But, we ask, by what means do these men
themselves reach their rules 1 and the answer must be,
by reflection on the constitution and destiny of man.
Eules and maxims belong to the secondary or deriva
tive morality, and rest for their validity on their
harmony with the universal nature of man. The
framer of them believes that he is constructing pre-

1 Notes on Paley, p. 92. 2 Emotions, etc., pp. 311, 312.

148 Professor Bain.

cepts which do so harmonize and which will best secure
for man the highest good possible for him here arid
hereafter. Followers of the more thoughtful kind
accept these maxims, because they themselves discern
this harmony and fitness, while many, doubtless, are
led by ulterior ends or sinister motives, and not a few
by the felt need of some law or other as a controlling
power in communities. To stop short at the secondary
or preceptive morality is to stop at the threshold of
the inquiry. It is this very secondary morality as
uttered by the legislator or prophet, or by a more
powerful than either, King Nomos, which is itself the
subject of inquiry and of controversy. When a
schoolmaster prescribes certain bounds beyond which
his boys are not to wander, is the precept founded on
the arbitrary will of the master ?

We are told, in illustration of the revolutions
possible in morality, of the change of feeling in
the United States on the subject of slavery. An
abhorrence of slaveholding now exists which two
centuries ago was not known. And were the anti-
slavery party now to succeed in making the main
tenance of their opinions a ' term of communion/
the abhorrence would be developed into a ' moral
sentiment/ There is here a confounding of senti
ments with maxims professedly based on sentiment,
and an implied attempt to convey that all ' moral
sentiments ' are artificial notions of the human mind
which may be made to order. That man would be
a fool who did not admit that the bearing of the

Professor Bain. 149

sentiments on our social relations, on custom, laws,
and on our own personal conduct, is capable from age
to age of larger interpretation and of greater refine
ment and of ever-increasing complexity. The consti
tution of human nature, and the fact of the existence
of the sentiments as motives and ends, and therefore
obligations, remains, notwithstanding, unchanged. We
deny then that it is ' mere trifling to fill our imagina
tion with [what Mr. Bain calls] an unseen, unpro-
ducible standard of morality ; ' nor do we think that
Solon, Mahomet, and other leaders of men were,
taken severally or conjointly, the authority that 'origi
nally prescribed almost any moral precept now recog
nised as binding/ It might surely have occurred to
Mr. Bain that to imagine that intuitionalism, main
tained in one form or another as it has been by the
weightiest intellects of Europe, was convertible with
a kind of bastard-Hobbism, was either ' trifling' with
his subject, or utterly misconceiving it.

Moral Sense. — Like many others, Mr. Bain, in his re
marks on the Moral Sense or Conscience — terms which
he regards as equivalent — unwittingly confounds the
Derivative Conscience with the primary discriminating
instinct of Tightness. The former is that aggregation
of precepts, rules, sentiments, and feelings of obliga
tion which every man trained in a civilized community
carries about with him, and from out of which he draws
from day to day and hour to hour the moral weapons
which the occasions of life require. The latter is that

150 Professor Bain.

power or process whereby a man originally discerns
the right act from the wrong. The Derivative Con
science all men are at one about : they differ as to the
mode of its formation, and the primitive elements
which enter into the composite structure.

It is true that those who maintain the existence in
man of a distinct Faculty or Sense which, in every
particular case, unreasoningly and unerringly selects
from out of a number of possible individual acts that
act which is alone right, identify the primary and the
derivative conscience. But what thinker (save War-
burton and, in a distant degree, Butler) can be said to
do this ? Conscience in this sense is the conscience
of the vulgar, and of necessity the conscience of
oratory ; but it finds no place in the creed of (at
least) any recent philosophy. And yet it is against
the Moral Sense so conceived that Mr. Bain and his
school generally direct their attacks, and it is over
this that they celebrate an easy victory. Our busi
ness is with a certain power, capacity, instinct, or
sense in man which discriminates — as an act of
judgment of course, for this form all conscious
movements of a rational being must take — certain
governing motives of conduct from one another and
forces the affirmation of rightness regarding the one
and wrongness regarding the other. But we shall not
here enter further into the general question, but confine
ourselves, as we have done hitherto, to Mr. Bain's own
reasonings, and to the exhibition of their inherent
contradictoriness.

Professor Bain. 151

We might of course expect that Mr. Bain, having
adopted the external standard of rightness, would deny
an innate faculty of moral discrimination ; for, if the
standard be external, and, as he says, ' exposed to the
observation and understanding of all men/ the facul
ties of observation, comparison, and inference are
adequate to the function of moral discrimination and
moral direction. To look for any fresh power or sense
would be to run counter to one of the first principles
of philosophical inquiry. But after he has taken up
this position, we are surprised to find him defining the
'Moral Sense'1 and the ' Conscience ' as the feeling
or faculty of approval and disapproval. Is then the
affirmation of approval a different process psycholo
gically from the affirmation that two and two make
four ; and is the affirmation of disapproval a different
psychological process from the affirmation that six
times six are not thirty-seven ? If some hidden
element enters into the one judgment which does not
enter into the other, what is that element ?

For our part, we should have expected a more
thorough and consistent treatment of these important
terms. Mr. Bain ought, feeling how pertinaciously
they cling even to his own thought, to have felt also
how they secretly vitiated his conclusions, and to
have got rid of them once and for all in some such
way as this : The Moral Sense or Conscience is
vulgarly held to be a feeling of approbation and
disapprobation, and by these words a moral judg-

1 Emotions and the Will, pp. 286 and 297.

152 Professor Bain .

ment is usually distinguished from an intellectual
judgment. But if we admit this separation of terms
in speaking of a specific class of phenomena, we
ipso facto admit the stirring up of something in us
on the presentation of certain acts, which is more
than the intellectual affirmation of the fitness of cer
tain movements to attain certain external results —
something emotional, and pleasurable, and law-giving :
we therefore discard the terms as illusory, and as
wrongfully usurping a place which rightfully belongs
to the words ' fitness and unfitness/

Having abjured a Moral Sense, our author then sets
about showing how the characteristics of the so-called
Moral Sense or Conscience may be accounted for
without having recourse to a separate faculty or feel
ing.1 But here again his argument, in so far as it is
good, is good only against the vulgar theory of a Con
science as the arbitrary discriminator and dictator of
the right and the wrong in each particular act. We
are entitled, however, to assume that he is endeavouring
to make good his point against intuitionalism generally.
This he is far from doing : his reasoning is powerless
against the doctrine which, we believe, really underlies
the vulgar one, and which we have endeavoured else
where to disentomb ; that, namely, which maintains
the existence of certain innate feelings called senti
ments, by which we measure acts, and which are ends
in themselves, though not fulfilling themselves in
themselves. In opposition to this subjective senti
mental theory all utilitarian attempts to construct a

1 Notes on Paley, p. 37.

Professor Bain. 1 5 3

non-sentimental theory of discrimination, dictation,
and approbation inevitably break down. Mr. Bain
himself tells us, in his attempt to construct the con
science, that ' there is a strong feeling of the Tight
ness of mutually dependent beings acting kindly to
each other' . . . that ' a Conscience without a heart
would not come up to the Conscience either of
the moralist or of the multitude' « . . and again,
that l the same power that enables a man to arrive
at truth gives the perception of truth, and with that
perception, all the approbation and satisfaction that the
adherence to truth can inspire ;' from which it would
appear that there is an intellectual approbation of
truthfulness or integrity capable of being stirred into
pleasurable emotion irrespectively of consequences.
Nor is this all ; for, according to our author himself,
( we must include the feeling of what is beaMiful
and noble among the conspiring ingredients of the
moral sense of the generality of mankind ;' from
which it follows, that there is a feeling or sentiment
of the beautiful in conduct, which can be stirred
into pleasurable emotion on the perception by the
intellect of certain acts, and which, therefore, is an
end in itself and for itself. There is also, we are
told, ' an imperious sentiment of moral fitness and
propriety altogether apart (in the case of gratitude,
and therefore in other cases) from the consideration
of justice, or of the evil consequences to society, of
discouraging the authors of benefits ;' and so on. But
if these sentiments are ends, they are also obliga
tions. It accordingly becomes as impossible to extract

154 Professor Bain.

consistency out of such heterogeneous statements
regarding a Moral Sense, as we have found it to be to
harmonize Mr. Bain's expositions of ends, criterion,
and obligation.

So much for the Conscience or Moral Sense as a
discriminator and approver. The mixing up of the
two functions is not our fault. There is a third
function, that of an authority, a law, a binding force.
On pages 286 and 297 of the Emotions and the Will,
Mr. Bain defines Conscience (which he identifies with
the Moral Sense) as the feeling of approbation and
reprobation. On page 313, when he again has to
treat of the same subject, he, without notice of the
separate moral functions which enter into the com
plex notion, treats of Conscience as meaning a senti
ment of authority or duty. In this confounding of
the functions of that which is popularly and inde
finitely called ' Conscience/ Mr. Bain has so many
companions, both of the utilitarian and the intuitive
school, that we do no more than make this passing
allusion to it as a common source of error. It of
course follows, from the fact that all obligation pro
ceeds from without, that Conscience, as an obligatory
sentiment, is simply an artificial image in the mind of
external authority — ' an imitation within ourselves
of the government without us/ No objection can be
taken to this description of the genesis of the human
Conscience which has not been already taken to the
theory of obligation itself. If there be no inner
obligatory forces penal and recompensing, there is
then no such thing as an inner Conscience save as an

Professor Bain. 155

illusion of the imagination or the intellect. And
there is nothing more to be said about it.

The history which Mr. Bain gives of the growth
of the sense of obligation or duty in the human
mind, from childhood upwards, is interesting and
valuable, in so far as external forces are concerned.
We do not think, however, that it is strictly ac
curate, except where the early training of children
is based on deterrent influences. Not terror, as
Mr. Bain maintains, but force as such, is the first
great lesson of childhood — force resisting the spon
taneous movements of the body and the will of the
child, but not necessarily associated with pain and
fear. To this succeeds the anticipation of force as a
preventive of certain acts, but not as a deterrent in
the sense of stirring up fear. "We cannot therefore
admit, as the result of our observation, that ' the infant
conscience is nothing but the linking of terror with
forbidden actions/ The deterrent influences, doubt
less, come in to support the others sooner or later,
and continue throughout life increasing rather than
decreasing in power as the knowledge of life extends.

We notice that Mr. Bain gives to the approbation
of others as such, apart from the consequences of it,
an importance and an external power of an obligatory
character which is denied to it elsewhere, but which,
if fully accorded, might prepare the way for a new
casting of the chapters on ends and obligations,
which would lift his moral theory altogether out of
the utilitarian rut.

156 Professor Bain.

We might point to further inconsistencies of state
ment arising from unconscious appropriations of non-
utilitarian doctrines, to which Mr. Bain is driven by
a necessity similar to that which we have already seen
operating in other parts of his argument. This, how
ever, would involve repetition and might be superfluous.
But after having followed him through the windings
and inconsistencies of his theoretical exposition, we
cannot read his concluding remarks without respect for
his loyalty to party at least, and to the thesis he had to
maintain, qualified though that respect be by the per
tinacity of his misconceptions and the negligence of
his logic. He concludes by telling us now, as at first,
that 'positive beneficence/ 'good offices/ 'positive
good deeds/ ' self- sacrifice/ are 'not objects of moral
approbation;' that they are objects of 'esteem and
reward/ but 'transcend the region of morality pro
per!' If they are not moral, not appro vable, not right,
not obligatory, what are they, and what new vocabu
lary shall we teach our children ? After all that has
been said, does it come to this, that Mr. Bain has only
got this familiar lesson of Jurisprudence to teach us,
that duties which the State enforces by penalties
have a larger quantitative, sanction than those which
are the fruit of a free and spontaneous development
of our rational nature in harmony with its lofty aims
and great destiny ?

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